Of Vox and vinegar

The Executive Director of mediachannel.org suggests cheese with what he presumes to be my fermented whine:

Born again libertarian Vox Day (pseudonym anyone?) has taken a break from his usual outrage to gloat over the Jordan resignation: “Jordan’s accusation made no sense at all,” he writes. “Because if American troops were going to target journalists, those topping the list would almost surely be the left-liberal elites working in New York City and Washington, D.C. The legacy media has hated the American soldier since Vietnam…”

Vox’s anger at the “New York Times and by the ABCNNBCBS cabal” seems to stem not only from a belief that liberals are leading America on a “long march toward lethal socialist utopia,” but also from his failure last year to sell his column to a single newspaper. Vox says he’s the victim of a vast left-wing media conspiracy. Or could it be that he’s just a crappy writer in need of a heavy dose of anger-management counseling?

Actually, I’ve despised the NYT and the ABCNNBCBS cabal long before I first put fingertips to keyboards with the intent to commit nonfiction. I sent Mr. Karr the following response:

Dear Mr. Karr,

While I may be a crappy writer – I will leave it to others to decide – you appear to be under a number of mistaken impressions. I hope you will not mind if I correct them.

First, I was not trying, and failing, to sell my column, Universal Press Syndicate was. Among other things, they informed me that numerous editors told them that my language and sentence structure was too difficult for their readership and even advised me to consider dumbing it down.

Second, it is interesting to note that in the one place where hard numbers make direct comparisons possible, my readership has, for the last two years, been larger than every other columnist at WND but two, including more widely distributed contributors such as Michelle Malkin,
Hugh Hewitt and Ben Shapiro. In some cases, it sextuples them. This would seem to indicate that reader lack of interest in my writing has not been the determinative factor.

And finally, while it is true that having published three novels with a major New York publishing house is no definitive proof of writing talent, it is arguably suggestive of some degree of literary competence.

As for the “pseudonym”, follow the Latin into Greek and you’ll find that it’s all perfectly clear.

With regards,
Vox Day

I do have to say that I am impressed that he got the small-l libertarian part right, and that he clearly understood the import of the adjective modifying the noun. But truly, my disdain for the Left is in no way increased by the failure of UPS to find legacy media interest in my column. That wouldn’t be possible.