The Big One. Credit: The Stranger

The Big One.

  • The Stranger
  • The Big One.

From the electronic mailbag (apropos of nothing in particular, apparently):

[subject line] Please add my name to the list, if you have one.

Please consider replacing Charles Mudede with a writer who is not Charles Mudede.

Thank you,

L.L.

For the record, I would like to be the first to add my name to the list of people who consider Charles Mudede irreplaceable. Here is the story I always think of first when considering how much I love Charles’ writing; here are the 39 feature stories he has written that exist in our online archives; and here are some installments of Police Beat from 1999. Read it and (sometimes literally) weep, people. Now, to the (as always, legally binding) Slog poll!

81 replies on “To Charles or Not to Charles? A Slog Poll”

  1. If I can survive the Inga Muscio years, I can certainly survive countless more Charles Mudede. Especially when writers are asked to give their opinions, I can’t expect that every opinion will be the same as mine–indeed, reading people who express their contrary views well can help make one’s own thoughts more three-dimensional.

    My issue with Charles has always been that sometimes he makes mistakes and bases his opinions on those mistakes and refuses to reconsider his opinions when presented with evidence of his mistakes. That is when I find him unreadable.

    Outspoken? Fine. Stubborn? All right. Unrepentent? Hmmmm…

    Convinced in the constant inerrancy of his every stray thought? Unfuriating and insufferable.

    So, I’m not voting. Currently, I can pick and choose how much Charles I’m willing to subject myself to. More importantly, I wouldn’t want the Stranger to only present writers whose every thought I agree with. On the other hand, I do hope that one day Charles will own up to occasionally being wrong.

  3. I get Slog as an RSS feed. With only the content showing, it takes anywhere from 3-8 words before I can reliably identify something as written by Charles Mudede.

    Then I always read it of course. He’s more interesting than anyone else here. He stays.

  4. It’s an interesting troll-tactic, I’ll give you that. It’s one thing to bash someone’s posts, but to literally recommend that the paper fire someone seems like it requires a certain amount of cajones that extend to feeling the potential guilt of helping to put a writer with a family out on the unemployment line.

    That said, while every writer’s voice should be heard, in our current economy, I don’t know how well every writer “deserves” to be paid for writing.

    No one is saying Charles should be banned from attempting to contribute to the headlines of Fark, or preventing him from having his own blog or Twitter account. Generally speaking, though, minimally annotated links and rambling opinion pieces are not hard to come by. For the former, you have Unpaid Interns (or, really, anyone under 30); for the latter, “outspoken, well-written people who have a lifetime of experience in the field they’re discussing”. It seems like with hundreds of thousands of people competing just to have their links atop Reddit, and probably hundreds of local bloggers producing valuable content, getting to post your favorite links or the random subjects on your mind to Slog and have people discuss them should almost be a *reward* for doing your job well, rather than a job in itself. (Unless, of course, you can do it so entertainingly that you build a cult of personality around yourself, which does not seem to apply in this case.)

    The question is not whether CM should be silenced (he certainly shouldn’t – and I’m sure he won’t be no matter what happens); it’s whether he deserves the Stranger’s writer’s salary more than every other writer in Seattle who can do real reporting (like, say, Dominic) AND manage some interesting blog posts besides.

    Writing is a job AND an art form. Let’s compare to photography, which is one of MY passions. Millions of people pay lots of money and spend time to shoot photos for FREE, and post them on the web free, just for the artistic expression (or the lottery-ticket hope they’ll one day get paid for it if their vision enraptures enough people). Tens of thousands of people have JOBS as photographers where they try to bring their art to difficult or uninteresting work (think: weddings, event photography, corporate work, news/sports coverage, corporate product/food shots). Hundreds of people, artistic geniuses or those whose tastes innately please the masses and/or critics (or that were at the right place at the right time) get jobs where they can follow their heart AND get paid a livable wage for it. These are the NBA stars of the art world. CM is not one of the NBA stars of the art world. (though Dan probably is).

    Anticipating the backlash: I am in no way anti-art, or anti-writing, or anti-photography. I want to live in a world where money is not the limiting factor for whether or not someone can produce art. Where your art’s marketability is not a factor in whether you get to produce or distribute it. Where things are less CAPITALIST. But when one of the few newspapers in the country still holding on to a little bit of profit is trying to decide where best to put its dollars, I’m going to be honest about my answer for the benefit of the paper and its readers, even if that’s uncharitable to one particular person (who is probably a great guy in real life).

  7. agreed, @17 FTW.

    Good job PEM!

    You can’t replace Charles, though. He’s half the reason I read this blog, even though I don’t live anywhere near Seattle anymore.

  8. There isn’t another writer anywhere that I enjoy more for his ability to make me think differently about economics. Charles IS a national treasure and I can’t imagine reading the slog without him!

  10. His features are usually really good. His long-form prose is excellent.

    But CHRIST his Slog contributions make him and the Stranger looks like complete imbeciles.

    But then again a large portion of the The Strangers Slog posts are fucking awful. What you don’t steal from Metafilter.

  15. Mudede is a pompous, bloviating, pretentious and self indulgent writer. His writing style tends to identify him even *without* a byline. I can’t count the number of times I have seen a headline or subject line about something I could be interested in, read a paragraph or two, thought to myself, “this smells like Mudede’s typographic vomit.”, checked the byline and found it to be so. Then I skip it and look for something else by someone who can write.

    This is particularly annoying and frustrating because Charles has nothing to say and enjoys saying it at great length and with frequent repetition; apparently the Stranger doesn’t discourage him from being prolific as he wanna be, so in some issues he’s all over the damn place.

    I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… Friends don’t let friends read Mudede. I *don’t* read Mudede’s dribblings if I can help it, but out of compassion for my fellow humans, I don’t think anyone else should have to either.

  18. If I can survive the Inga Muscio years, I can certainly survive countless more Charles Mudede.

    Awesome! As a long-time reader, I heartily agree, even as I condemn you to the fetid pits of Hell for mentioning her name. (“Male scientists with tits…”)

    Please, please, PLEASE keep Mr. Mudede on Slog, cranking out cranky posts insinuating (but ever lacking the guts to say outright) that Amanda Knox was GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY of some bizarre Satanic sex-murder of her British flat-mate. His downward spiral is a warning to us all.

    (And, if he can ever shake his Amanda fetish, he’ll return to being an informative and entertaining writer.)

  19. I can’t say that I like all of his posts and articles. But I can say that his unique voice stands out more than any other writer on Slog or elsewhere. It only takes a few words into any post to know who wrote it when it’s Charles.

  20. Keep him.

    “On Slog he’s primarily a troll, churning out nonsensical, self-indulgent claptrap designed to piss off his haters…”.

    “…a pompous, bloviating, pretentious and self indulgent writer.”

    “Often annoying. Occasionally idiotic. Occationally wonderful. Usually interesting.”

    These descriptions of him apply to SLOG commenters in general, so it’s not as if the haters would be free of all that is making their lives unbearable.

  21. @52 Two edits.

    “countless more of Charles” and “infuriating”

    I made mistakes in a post where I criticized Charles for making mistakes. Irony probably tastes like gravy.

    However, I’ve now both identified and owned up to my mistakes and if my opinions had been based upon mistakes, I would be willing to reconsider them.

  28. BJC is now giving the alleyoop assist to CM trollish poking? sigh/zzzz

    While his big wood article was indeed a nice little poetry break, the rest of his shit still smells.
    Interwebs ProvoKation does not good writing make.

    If this thread actually had any weight, I’d say ‘please stop paying him. if he keeps writing, so be it.’

    though @17 FTW

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