Below is an email I received Friday from internationally known journalist Ryan Lambert, who writes for Yahoo Sports on their hockey site Puck Daddy. Other than me having italicized his email to distinguish it from the rest of the text in this post, this is precisely as it came from him, lack of capitalization and all:
hey snowflake, take your "stick to sports" 700-word email that you know for sure I would never care about and put it in the toilet. it really doesn't matter to me what you or any other MAGA loser thinks.
you're on the wrong side of history. can't imagine why you would send me this email except to cry about it.
get lost.
I think that tells you all you need to know about the kind of person Lambert is, especially since my email to which he was responding actually stated that I read his articles "almost every day and find them to be both good and enjoyable."
I emailed him directly, rather than comment in the comments section of one of his articles, for the specific reason that I know such comments tend to result in people jumping in and being rude and disrespectful without saying anything substantive. My aim was to avoid their ilk, but little did I know that Lambert would show himself to be one of them.
What originally prompted me to write was his increasing tendency to drop political opinions in the middle of his sports columns without bothering to provide any support for those opinions -- unlike his sports opinions, which he does explain and support.
In my email, I pointed out that he tends to attack the character of those who disagree with him on politics but does not bother to explain why his political views are better or why his opponents' are bad. Instead, he merely proclaims that those whose politics differ from his are low-IQ bigots and then he scurries away. (Yes, when you consider what I just typed, perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised by his infantile response to me, but nonetheless I am -- so maybe I am stupid after all!)
Anyway, it's amusing that Lambert called me a snowflake when he was the one acting with nothing but emotional incontinence and I was the one offering reasoned thoughts.
It's also amusing that he called me a "MAGA loser," seeing as how I published several things during the 2016 election that were fiercely critical of Donald Trump. (MAGA stands for "Make America Great Again.")
Part of me thinks I should stop this post right now and hit the "publish" button. Another part of me thinks I should show what I meant when I just said that my email to Lambert offered "reasoned thoughts." Well, I'm the kind of person who likes to back up what I say, and I do not want to make anyone guess wrong about the tenor of my email to Lambert, so here is what I wrote to him about one of his recent columns (my email was obviously not italicized, but the underlines were there):
In a September 6th piece you declared the Chicago Blackhawks logo "racist as hell," and said that anyone who claims otherwise "has a weird ulterior motive" and is uttering "the kind of thing dumbass white people say." Yet you did not explain why you think the logo is racist at all, much less racist as hell (other than linking to an article by Greg Wyshynski in which he too failed to explain how it is racist, though at least he engaged in the not very intellectual task of citing a lone example of a 7-year-old child not liking a similar logo that is worn by a youth team in a different country). If the Blackhawks logo is so racist then it should be extremely easy to explain why, but neither you nor Greg did (could?).
And you sure "as hell" did not explain what makes white people "dumbass" when they beg to differ about the Blackhawks logo. It is simply a picture of a Native American visage - a generally accurate picture that is not a caricature and does not belittle. The team name Blackhawks derives from an old US military unit that was named after a Native American leader named Black Hawk. He fought against the US in this country's early years, and was an important historical figure who wrote the first-ever Native American autobiography. The hockey team's logo has probably done more to keep his memory alive than all of the textbooks, documentaries, college lectures, magazine articles, and newspaper columns ever produced - all of them combined. So yes, there is a very logical, very substantiated argument not only for the logo not being racist, but for it being the opposite of racist, and you have not offered the slightest counter to that argument. Instead, what you have done is engage in name-calling and character defamation against those who suggest that maybe you should offer an actual argument.
I also addressed another column, by writing this:
Today, in response to Max Domi's suggestion that the NHL should increase the size of the goal cage, you wrote: "Leave it to the MAGA guy to push a dumb idea that a bunch of people already came up with." And that was literally all you said on the subject. I too am not a fan of the idea (because I think it would cheapen scoring and make inter-era statistical comparisons harder than they already are) but it seems like your sole intent in commenting on Domi's sports idea was to levy a clear implication that people who support Donald Trump are "dumb." That is a personal attack, and if you suggest such a thing in writing you have a professional and ethical obligation to support it, which you did not.
I was not all lovey dovey in my email, but I laid my reasoning out and left it open to debate -- after having identified myself to Lambert as a daily reader who enjoys his columns. And the way I ended my email doesn't really amount to fighting words: "I think you should reconsider slipping political asides into your columns if you aren't going to elaborate on them. That's all."
To which he responded with all the intelligence and maturity of a middle schooler making fart jokes while masturbating in the boy's room.
Remember, we are talking about a well-known person who is on Yahoo's payroll for the specific purpose of trafficking in opinions.
There is a wonderful feistiness to the opinion business and that feistiness belongs there, assuming the person being feisty has made his point and addressed counter-arguments raised by those on the other side. In other words, I would never expect Ryan Lambert to adopt a "customer is always right" attitude when dealing with his readers -- but I do expect a man who enjoys jabbing his sharp elbows at people to be, shall we say, a wee bit tougher when those people jab their own elbows back at him. Calling them "losers" and telling them to "get lost" without bothering to even acknowledge what they said, much less address what they said, is a pathetic sign of intellectual impotence.
In fact, it is so pathetic that I gave Lambert the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe he didn't actually read what I said. After all, his characterization of it as a "'stick to sports' 700-word email" seemed to miss the fact that it specifically said: "There is of course nothing wrong with a sportswriter having political opinions, and
if a sportswriter explains/supports his political opinion when he brings it up in a sports column, I would not have a problem with him doing so even though one of the main reasons people follow sports is to get away from the constant drumbeat of politics."
So maybe he just saw my subject line ("political comments detracting from your hockey articles") and replied without taking the time to read? Who has time to read my long-winded brain droppings, anyway?
So today I emailed him back, saying only this: "Amusing reply. My only question is: Did you read the email or were you reacting only to the subject line?"
And this was his response, once again typed without expending the energy of moving his finger over to the shift key to capitalize: "yeah i read it and it's one of my great regrets. you're awful. don't email me."
I suspect (but don't know) that Ryan Lambert's priggish attitude and inability to engage in rational debate over his political and social views is not unusual among journalists, because I suspect (but again, don't know) that they hold those views dearly despite having never taken the time to think them through or put them to the test.
The good news is that my grudge-holding (I cannot write this post and simultaneously claim there is no grudge here) doesn't extend to me refusing to read Lambert's hockey columns. In fact, I read
his new one this very evening and it is quite good.
But should you ever find yourself wondering if he's a great guy or if he's open to a productive, good faith exchange of ideas, be aware that he's not. And should you ever wonder if his non-hockey beliefs stem from him possessing knowledge and pondering it, be aware that the evidence suggests they do not.
When a man behaves like a jackass and disrespects people who debate in good faith, it tends to be because he's a jackass who acts in bad faith.
I suppose I just engaged in a little name-calling myself... but at least I have a basis for it, and that basis consists of words from the donkey's own mouth.
