YOU ARE WRONG, as I mentioned almost from the start of this I have never considered myself "a writer" except in that I write stuff. My one and only writing teacher told me that anyone who writes words is a writer but I've never claimed to be one. I doubt that most of the paid scribblers of the past wouldn't have been better at it than I am if they didn't have recourse to someone editing what they scribbled. And I did, explicitly, reject the idea that I was playing "journalist" and especially the only legitimate form of that, the reporting of accurate fact, "opinion journalism" being no better than what I do even at its best. "Opinion journalism" is one of those phrases invented so that the media industry could publish lies and claim to be living up to some kind of professional ethics. As was said by the ghost of Oliver, the director in that great Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows about "theatrical ethics," "There's no such thing." Not that there couldn't be, it's just that under "freedom of the press" and the idiotic legal fiction of a "right to lie" there is no such a thing now.
Given that, I'll note that I do have my moments, looking over at the headline listed in my little used alternative blog, you'll see I rhymed "senescence" with "tumescence" to good effect, which I have to say I still like. And there has been the odd limerick or so. Maybe I should go back to doing that, my rule was that unless I could do it in less than five minutes I wouldn't post it. I'd give myself seven or eight, these days.
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