I live in the Tampa Bay area and can promise you that Bubba the Love Sponge is one of the foulest misogynists to ever skirt an FCC citation. IIRC, he brought in a hunter who castrated and otherwise mutilated the boar before killing it. Although he was brought up on animal cruelty charges, he ended up being aquitted.
After that (still a number of years ago) he won the Democratic nomination for Pinellas County sheriff. He had legally changed his name and was actually on the ballot as “Bubba the Love Sponge”. That was one of the two times in 20+ years of voting that I crossed party lines and voted for a Republican.
SOP, for lawyers that will do anything for the W. How the snakes all wind up in the same pit is somewhat amazing but then again, its totally natural I suspect.
These are people that literally know better and are supposedly held to higher standards, which brings on the cringing reality that typical standards are extremely low.
Give them community service for about 5 years or so and limit their drivers licenses, have them report in to a PO and do random pee tests for the same 5 years and start the process all over again when they mess up. Oh, and have them do trash pick up along the roadside in jail clothes every other weekend also too just because its free I guess. This is known as fair treatment based on what the lawyers seek against every other petty offender.
After that, they can start in on paying retribution and court costs and for their absolutely necessary anger management and alcohol counseling.
They hold up rather well, for sure. I had a John D. reading jag a few years ago. My mother threatened to give them away, so I offered to take them. I was about to agree with you about todays writers, but then I thought of some more contemporary authors that I do respect. Perhaps there has always been a lot of trash, but the good stuff endures and is remembered.
I’m sure there are still good writers out there, I’m just having trouble finding them. I think one problem is that there are just so many now. Anyone can publish, and unfortunately they do. My brother has self-published several books. I only read the first two or three. They were horrible as I suspect many self-published books are. The problem is that with so many authors available, one can waste a lot of time reading junk before you find the ones that are good.
Also, I must say that editing seems to have lost favor with modern writers and publishers. They seem to think that if they run a spell check then they don’t need editing. As an editor it is painful for me to read poorly edited work and the errors can sometimes hamper the flow of the story so much that I just give up. I’ve actually been reading a lot more non-fiction. My rationale is that even if it is poorly edited and, therefore, not so much fun to read, if it is true than at least I’m learning something.
I’m not just talking about grammatical errors and misspellings, I’m also talking about leaving loose ends all over the place, plot discrepancies, and physically (as in the law of physics) impossible or ridiculously implausible happenings. Even science fiction has to make some sort of sense, if only within the context of the story.
