Q's Views

I enjoy Lit Net. I don't post much because I don't consider myself that smart, but I sure do enjoy reading the opinions of others.

Opinions...hmmm.

In my youth, there was a group of us that would get together to drink beer and play Risk. We'd listen to rock music on the radio. We'd cut up. It was fun. I recall one instance where a song came on the radio and I stated that I really enjoyed that band. This fellow across the table says to me, "Opinions are like *holes, everyone has one" which I had heard before, but he added, "and yours stinks." I got really mad and my buddies had to break up a fight before it started because not only had this offended one of my favorite bands, he had upset a pretty important part of my anatomy. Most of all I couldn't fathom what qualified this guy to pass judgement on my opinion.

When I was in college, I had to read The Odyssey and The Grapes of Wrath in freshman English. Other classes were reading stuff like Cat's Cradle, Huckleberry Finn, and Lord of the Flies. We had this ancient professor and she loved these two books. We had to write an essay on what we thought Homer was trying to say, blah, blah, blah. I had been taught that you can have whatever opinion you want, but back it up with facts. I wrote and essay that was nearly flawless grammatically and spelling wise, but I got a B- because my opinion was wrong. I disagreed with the teacher's view. Huh? My opinion, substantiated as it was, was wrong? My next paper (mostly because the class was boring) I agreed with her opinion thoughout, but I massacred the language, misspellings, bad syntax, you name it. Yep, B-.

Now the lesson there was to write an immaculate paper and agree with teacher, but these two works (to me at that time) were absolutely loathsome. So being immature, I took the disagreement B minus.

Some of my favorite threads are these solicitations of a the "overrated" work or author. They really entertain me because some knuckle head will bring up someone like this Shakespeare fellow and declare him over-rated. Or Mark Twain. What? Some opinions expressed in these threads are just silly and I assume these might be younger members who don't really know what they're saying. There are some lively discussions regarding some of the polarizing writers whose works people generally either like or dislike. James Joyce is a great example. I've personally never read Joyce, but it seems to boil down to folks who get it and those who don't.

Inevitably, someone adds the "and yours stinks". I don't know why it's necessary, but it always happens. Feathers get ruffled. But it's an opinion. I loved Moby Dick. I loved the Old Man and the Sea. Some folks didn't enjoy them. I get that, but there's a difference between "I read Moby Dick and just found it boring and monotonous" and "Melville is a hack." Give me a break...

Oh, the point? Well, as we draw nearer and nearer to the American election, I am barraged by ads and commentaries that consistently tell me that my opinion "stinks". To this day, I still get my hackles up over that. It's an attack on personal hygiene.