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”

  2. I love Charles, but that doesn’t mean you guys couldn’t also do with a U.S.-raised African American writer not restricted to Line Out. The last was Riz, and that was more than ten years ago.

  6. I did enjoy his Police Beat work. His postings since then are overwhelmingly self-involved, bigoted, misogynistic, hyperbolic and idiotic. Axe!

  8. He trolls and performs a lot of devils’ advocacy. His trolls are fairly obvious and never make me mad, and the quality of his posts is generally high. His most dedicated haters are also usually at best unconvincing, the rest are gullible, and he draws out white supremacists and “edgy” south park conservatives like a bug bomb.

  12. @12: “Everything is so overwritten.”

    And yet, unlike mainstream punditry, I laugh and a brain cell lights up now and then.

  14. Charles is a treasure, and we are lucky to have him, even if I don’t understand him or disagree with him half the time. He is crazy in the best way possible. Don’t ever get rid of him.

  15. If the Stranger would offer the ability to filter writers out of the RSS feed, I’d be ok with his pseudo-intellectual claptrap being published where I couldn’t see it.

    As it stands, I find it incredibly irritating to click through an interesting headline to get self-impressed and mostly incoherent ramblings about how toothpaste explains the racist overtones of neoliberalism.

    Plus when he’s stoned. He writes like this. He think’s it’s punchy. But really it’s obvious. He’s too stoned. Too stoned for clauses. It’s obvious he’s too stoned for clauses.

    DTMFA.

  16. Mudede’s non-Amanda Knox features are lovely. It’s his Slog posts that are borderline insane. I propose a system of emoticons to help us parse his often inscrutable approaches to tone.

    🙂
    I have noticed something magical on the way to work about birds.

    😉
    I am provoking you to get a reaction. Slog is my tickle machine.

    🙁
    Shitty things about kids and dogs.

    🙁 ™
    Shitty things about my kids.

    XX
    Shitty things about women

    😮
    Space! Rainbows. F*ing magnets, how do they work!

    8-o
    Philosophy!

    $
    Marxism.

    $$
    Marxism rocks.

    $$$
    The futility of Americans who buy things

    $$$ :’-(
    Marxist reasons why it’s okay someone middle class is sad.

    $•$ :’-(
    The fact that a robber of color made them sad puts me in an awkward place philosophically.

    $•$ :’-( ™
    He took your wallet?!? Yet again my children embarrass me!

    †
    Amanda Knox did it.

    ††
    Or maybe not.

    †††
    No, she really did it.

    †††††††††††††
    She’s white and has sex, people! Stabby, stabby!

    m/
    I have heard of a band.

  17. I hate his writing and I never read his articles, but when he’s not talking about boobs, I agree with him more often than not. I say, “Hold on to that goddamned Marxist!”

  19. I find him entertaining. SLOG would not be the same without him. I like his posts about science and astronomy, although his analysis sometimes reads like somebody dosed his coffee with LSD. The comments on Charles’ posts are high quality entertainment and assuming you are on a per view fee with your ads, they are a valuable cash source for The Stranger. The Amanda Knox trolling is getting really old.

  24. I used to really dislike his work, but I’ve grown to love and respect it over time. Mudede is amazing. There, I said it.

    That said, @17 is my nomination for comment of the year, so far.

  25. Speaking as someone who is frequently annoyed by what Charles writes, I still can’t envision Slog or the Stranger without him. The occasional gem does get through… (..the obfuscating fog of racism, Marxism and ‘over-thinking’ism.)

    Although I suspect he may have peaked during the Police Beat days!

  27. Charles is expert at inciting discussion and debate (or, provoking reactions for the amusement of all). His writing is the most thought-provoking of any writer’s on Slog or in the Stranger. I personally find his Marxist and Freudian observations often quaint if not positively old-fashioned, but I appreciate his voice and perspective immensely.

    Without Charles, the voice of Slog and the Stranger would be monolithic and insipid. You need him.

  28. His long-form storytelling is terrific.

    On Slog he’s primarily a troll, churning out nonsensical, self-indulgent claptrap designed to piss off his haters and get plenty of hits.

  29. I like Charles. Yes, sometimes he makes me really angry (dogs) or really bored (Amanda Knox), but his posts always make me think, and sometimes he comes up with a real gem. He sat next to me one night out on Linda’s patio while I was reading, and I felt more excited than seeing celebrities at the Grove.

  31. His posts are useful as litmus tests for which commenters I should ignore (the ones that freak out at his posts) and which I should pay attention to. Great features, great sense of humor.

    Also, nice work, PEM.

  32. I love Charles. I love how I can tell it’s a Charles SLOG post just by the insanity of the headline. And his feature articles are wonderful. And fuck all those A-list hipsters I met when I first moved here that were like “Charles Mudede sucks.” No, you suck.

  33. Crap. My funny and original comment disappeared, so I’ll just say this: I hate Charles! Long live Charles! Keep him here, where he annoys only us.

  35. Just keep him off Slog. In short form he is annoying and dizzying. Long form is where he’s at. He’s too deep for blogging. Imagine Charles on Twitter? Eek.

  40. comment 17- that was genius

    I agree with the people who say he should just be kept off slog. His feature pieces are generally very good, but maybe he could be limited to a certain number of slog posts per day or something? It can be really distracting.

  42. Slog is definitely richer for Charles’ posts.

    I’m thinking of the Grandpa Simpson line about how the nursing home won’t let the old folks read the newspapers, because “they angry up the blood.”

  44. @39 That’s my favorite too, actually one of the best things I can ever remember reading in the Stranger. Unfortunately, the majority of his slog posts have the exact opposite effect for me.

  47. I generally shy away from commenting (since most of my thoughts / opinions are rendered far more eloquently by others on here), but I feel compelled to mention how much I enjoy Charles’s presence at the Stranger / SLOG. He’s absolutely my favorite writer on staff, even when he pisses me off or leaves me scratching my head.

    I think @13 said it best: “And yet, unlike mainstream punditry, I laugh and a brain cell lights up now and then.” Oh, and @33, too: “I love how I can tell it’s a Charles SLOG post just by the insanity of the headline.” Oh, how I love spotting a Mudede Slog headline!

  48. I recommend a gentleman I met once named Marles Chudede. He is a lot like Charles except that he wears a hat and a big, bushy moustache.

  50. He is irreplaceable. It would be difficult to find another writer so bad who had a self image that would allow him to write. Not everything is hard to understand because its deep. Some things are hard to understand because they’re poorly written trite cliches.

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