Making Mean Disappear

GW Lawprof Lawrence Cunningham has a book out about AIG's Hank Greenberg, which he has been shameless pumping over at Concurring Opinions.  This isn't unusual over there, where the prawfs do what they can to bring attention to their efforts, and having put a great deal of effort into producing what they believe to be a good book, there's nothing wrong with it. 

But no matter how good a book may be, somebody out there is going to say something unpleasant about it. This is true of Cunningham's book. This is true of the Bible. That's just how people are, and it's especially true when it's a book about a person with as many enemies as AIG and Hank Greenberg.  You would think that Cunningham, a big boy, would realize this. Not so, apparently.

Cunningham posted one of the whiniest screeds against what he claims to be phony book reviews ever to grace the interwebz. 

Bad book reviews thus must be taken with a grain of salt these days.   Especially for books addressing controversial topics, “reviewers” reflect what they believe about the topic. They do not engage with the substance of the book author’s argument or the content of her book.

It is easy to spot some such faux reviews, broadcast by inane headlines favored by the 1-star posters at amazon.   But the more sophisticated versions are harder to detect.  Writers make references to the book, giving a summary of its arc or stating the broad thesis. Yet they leave clues.  Look for a snarky tone, particularly strident language, straw men, and hyperbole.  Be especially skeptical of any review that cannot find one redeeming point to make about a book.

Or maybe the reviewer just hated the book?  That's not an option in Cunningham's paradigm.  Brian Cuban, who also has a book coming out shortly, gave the grown-up response to this childishness.



And so, it was a kerfluffle, a bit of infantile butthurt improvidently posted on the internet, to which a more mature, realistic reaction provided a much needed smack to suck it up.  Publish things and people are going to love it, hate it, or think something in between.  This is the price of publishing, and anybody who thinks that crying about the unfairness of it all, the angst of haters, needs a serious dose of reality.

But it didn't end there.  Instead of taking his medicine like a grown-up, Cunningham did the one thing that could make this worse.  At his post, there were at least seven comments, most nicely explaining why his rant was less than persuasive.  There were more comments that never made the light of day, mine among them, that weren't attacking Cunningham, but were taken as vicious direct attacks.  His reaction to the posted comments was off-the-charts personally antagonistic. 

You won't see these comments, however.  After Brian's post appeared, Cunningham deleted the comments that didn't make him feel loved, even though they were hardly mean.  Of course, mean is often defined rather subjectively by overly delicate teacups, and anything less than absolutely adoring or unquestionably supportive can be viewed as "mean" if you look at it through a peculiar lens.

I saw the comments. Brian saw the comments. The people who left the comments saw the comments.  And yet Cunningham, days later, went back to make the comments disappear. This cannot be done, at least if one hopes to maintain a bit of dignity and integrity.  You can't reinvent the internet to make yourself appear less of a butthurt whiner.

Brian added an update to his post to alert readers of the post-hoc deleted comments:

 ** UPDATE 3/27/13   Yesterday, I  was alerted to  and confirmed that Professor Cunningham has apparently deleted the string of comment(s) in which he ranted about  “bad reviews” of one of his books.  Not sure it if was the result of this post.  I leave it to the reader to determine how it affects his credibility.

Did Cunningham try to sanitize the post, silence those he perceived to be his enemies, by deleting the comments?  Who knows.  What is known is that this didn't go unnoticed, and may well be the only thing Cunningham could have done to sink himself deeper following on a post of such dubious merit.

Thus, there are two takeaways from this butthurt post: first, that no matter how hard you work and how well you think of your own work, others will not like it. Suck it up. This is life.  Second, that having made the mistake of publishing a butthurt rant about the problems of being a special snowflake, don't try to undo the internet to clean up the mess.

There are people who will hate, whether because they're haters or because, well, what you did (and what I did) sucks.  If you can't get over the fact that you can't please everybody, then you can't publish, whether a book or a blog post.  There will be people who think you suck.

Get over it.





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