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You know, I thought the piece on Aniston was slight, but I don't get why there has been such a vitriolic firestorm of protest toward Salon and Rebecca Traister.
It took a while for me to get used to Traister's whiplash style. She can go from snarky fluff piece to thoughtful social commentary at the drop of a hat, and I'm not sure she's found her voice just yet. That being said, I think she's a talented writer, and reading her pieces is a lot like chatting over coffee with a silly but smart girlfriend.
The truth is that the Jennifer/Brad thing really has been in the news this year. Constantly. Inescapably. Don't blame Salon for that irrefutable fact. I know there are a lot of people who think Salon had bygone halcyon days of exclusively intellectual articles interspersed with incisive political commentary, but the truth is that it's always been an eclectic mix of pop culture and harder-hitting stuff. That mix is what's kept me reading (and paying) for over three years now.
If you go back a few years, you'll find not only Camille Paglia's rhetoric but musings on the social implications of Jennifer Lopez's ass. I also find it strange that last week's article about Kathy Griffin's divorce garnered a ton of positive letters. Maybe it's just that Pittifer (or Pittiston, or Jennibrad, or what the hell ever) has been done to death. Maybe it's pent-up frustration over Salon's mystifying new search engine (they really do need to tweak that thing). Maybe Traister rubs some of you the wrong way.
I just think it's patently unfair to slam Salon for a thoughtful piece about why Aniston has been on the cover of almost every single magazing in the free world this year. The content on Salon has always been hit and miss, but in my opinion the hits are far more frequent. It's simple to ignore fluff pieces. Why not just click right past them and move on to the articles that interest you?
