Why you should love elephant even if you hate its editor’s stupid uninformed opinions.

Update: new back and forths, at bottom.

This afternoon, I received the following email from one of my best friends, XX, who had received a worrying message from a friend of hers:

On Feb 18, 2011, at 4:28 PM, XX wrote:

Subject: Waylon Bob Dylan article

“Did Waylon really write that article about hating Bob Dylan??? I’m having a terrible reaction to that… it’s making me not want to read Elephant at all.  I know that’s stupid…. but it’s my reaction and it makes me fear for Elephant…didn’t know what else to do so I wrote you.”

Here’s the article referenced:

My first reply:

Are you kidding?

My second reply:

Sorry…it’s just one man’s opinion. Your friend is wonderful I’m sure but her saying she is tempted to write off elephant for one man’s opinion is like saying “I’m going to stop reading the Huffington Post or NY Times” because I disagree with an opinion piece they hosted or that Arianna wrote.

Is our ability to debate and disagree really so anemic these days that we have to shut out those with differing opinions? I don’t think it’s as bad as that.

The article is about how Dylan has sold out and even in his prime wasn’t a hero of Civil Rights and frustrated many with his lack of interest in getting involved. The article is about how cafes and Pandora overplay his music, and the music of others, until we begin to dislike music we used to love. It’s not worth divorcing elephant over, I don’t think, though if your friend would like to dislike me, instead of debating, that’s her choice. I hope she’ll reconsider, of course.

Yours,

Way

Waylon Lewis – founder: http://www.elephantjournal.com | host: Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis. Ft. on 20 sites, incl Huffington Post.
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My friend’s reply, with her friend’s rather touching and insightful and kind reply:

response no. 2.

i haven’t even read the article yet. I will. but here you go.

the core of her reaction was rather sweet in the end…

xx

Begin forwarded message:

Yeah, I saw as his response to some of the comments that he was trying to say what he says below.  I guess I wanted to point out that I didn’t “hear” what he was saying….I was too busy having a gut reaction that was really big…. enough to make me view ELEPHANT differently.  He is completely right about what he says about my reaction being ridiculous.  I saw that too…immediately… how stupid my reaction was.  Nonetheless I was having the experience of this reaction and it over-rode my ability to see or think or feel through to get to what he was saying.  Then my reaction just took me where it wanted to.  And that had an effect on my view of Elephant.

You know me, XX, that I have loved Elephant since the early days and of course I would never stop reading it.  My pointing this out was my reaction to my reaction….. I moved into protective-mama-mode cuz Waylon and Elephant are like family to you so of course I am going to say something to you when I think there’s something out there that might be damaging to your family…

Hopefully I’m the only one out there that had such a reaction.  But from some of the comments, I don’t think so.

Just want them to be safe out there…

You too.

love you, XX

My reply:

Many folks have had that reaction. I don’t think her reaction is stupid, not at all.

I do think our ability as a country, as a people, to agree to disagree and be civil in that disagreement has become anemic, and that’s worse than sad—it just means that half of us will watch Fox News and nod our heads and half of us will watch some liberal thing and nod our heads and the whole country will go to hell.

Big thanks for sharing.

…

Yours,

Way