Sunday, August 08, 2021

A Reminder from the Past

If you're tempted to tangle with Heather MacDonald, directly or indirectly, over her recent awful article (part 1 of 2!), I advise ignoring her. Folks with her beliefs can't be persuaded; the only reason to engage with her or what she writes is for bystanders.

Around ten years ago, she and Greg Sandow had a dust-up and Greg wound up writing five articles, a tremendous waste of his time. I wrote about that exchange myself and mentioned her here and here. Seriously, don't bother.

4 comments:

Dtlajim said...

I'm a Black/Latino Classical music lover and I really enjoyed MacDonalds' 2 articles and commented on them. I don't agree with everything she writes, but I found the articles thought provoking, interesting and enlightening.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Say more, because I regard her as 90% troll based on what I've read in the past. This includes her ridiculous complaint that there was some kind of conspiracy among NY opera critics to force the Met to present what she considers to be overly radical productions. The assumptions in the current articles look ignorant at best, at least those in the several paragraphs I read before deciding against giving her any more time.

Dtlajim said...

Haven't read her other articles on classical music and it doesn't matter, I was commenting on the specific articles you mentioned. Your trashing this set of 2 articles after admitting you haven't read through them. Really... People on the right do this all the time and we on the left complain bitterly... And yet here you are.

Lisa Hirsch said...

I have actually tried reading them and...there's a lot of very selective quotating and bad thinking, so I have given up.