In case you haven’t heard:
Jeremy Blachman has outted himself as the author of Anonymous Lawyer.
I don’t know about you, but I think this is a pretty huge blogosphere event. It’s an outing that occurred on the pages of the New York Times. The paper of record for the United States of America took a trip into Jeremy’s promising career, and our little corner of the blogging realm. I think that’s cool. I think it makes us more interesting by association. Don’t you feel more interesting fair reader? Don’t you?
Jeremy writes a charming and funny personal blog, group-blogs here and there, attends Harvard Law, and probably finds time to eat and sleep. I’m a big fan of “Jeremy Blachman writes so much he doesn’t have time to *Blank*,” jokes. I had lunch with Jeremy once and I told him then that I half expected him to break conversation by furiously typing up a song parody about Finals Week, Paper Napkins, or the Act of Writing Song Parodies.
I think Jeremy told me about AL very nearly after he started it. I think, actually, that I emailed the AL yahoo address encouraging AL to keep writing after I read a nervous and self conscious post admitting to its fiction, and apologizing for tricking people and publishing the blog as though it were real. Other people must have said thing similar, because that post disappeared, and Jeremy added the word “fictional” to AL’s description header.
As far as I can tell, most people seem to think Jeremy did a great job and a good thing by writing Anonymous Lawyer. I think he did. I think satire is good, and important, and useful. Even lawyers who like the law and who like law firms should be able to appreciate AL. Satire shows what’s imperfect with something, not necessarily that something is wholly wrong. If done correctly, you can satire Mother Theresa and get away with it. AL is about a facet of law. It’s about the sometimes consequences of smart people working too hard in a hierarchical monied institution where egos are bigger than self-esteem. And you know what? If AL were a satirical blog about a mean, powerful and lonely hospital administrator, Jeremy’d still make it funny, and it wouldn’t be “mean to doctors”. It’d just be funny satire.
PG and Law Dork both have lists of links about this event. Check ‘em out. They’re interesting.
I don’t know about you, but I think this is a pretty huge blogosphere event. It’s an outing that occurred on the pages of the New York Times. The paper of record for the United States of America took a trip into Jeremy’s promising career, and our little corner of the blogging realm. I think that’s cool. I think it makes us more interesting by association. Don’t you feel more interesting fair reader? Don’t you?
Jeremy writes a charming and funny personal blog, group-blogs here and there, attends Harvard Law, and probably finds time to eat and sleep. I’m a big fan of “Jeremy Blachman writes so much he doesn’t have time to *Blank*,” jokes. I had lunch with Jeremy once and I told him then that I half expected him to break conversation by furiously typing up a song parody about Finals Week, Paper Napkins, or the Act of Writing Song Parodies.
I think Jeremy told me about AL very nearly after he started it. I think, actually, that I emailed the AL yahoo address encouraging AL to keep writing after I read a nervous and self conscious post admitting to its fiction, and apologizing for tricking people and publishing the blog as though it were real. Other people must have said thing similar, because that post disappeared, and Jeremy added the word “fictional” to AL’s description header.
As far as I can tell, most people seem to think Jeremy did a great job and a good thing by writing Anonymous Lawyer. I think he did. I think satire is good, and important, and useful. Even lawyers who like the law and who like law firms should be able to appreciate AL. Satire shows what’s imperfect with something, not necessarily that something is wholly wrong. If done correctly, you can satire Mother Theresa and get away with it. AL is about a facet of law. It’s about the sometimes consequences of smart people working too hard in a hierarchical monied institution where egos are bigger than self-esteem. And you know what? If AL were a satirical blog about a mean, powerful and lonely hospital administrator, Jeremy’d still make it funny, and it wouldn’t be “mean to doctors”. It’d just be funny satire.
PG and Law Dork both have lists of links about this event. Check ‘em out. They’re interesting.
posted by neotokyotimes on
Sunday, December 26, 2004
