System11, great post.
I don't much care for a lot of what she did, but perspective, people.
There definitely was an element of (to my mind totally unjustified and nasty) sexism in this story; she was represented in the parody show "Spitting Image" as either crossdresser or hermaphrodite.
I definitely enjoy most of her comments, in an ironic way: "And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." If that list keeps growing she'll end up at society
Like Reagan I don't dismiss the incalculable harm she did to the marginalized and the poor - but then again the British (and European) ideal of welfare assistance still appears somewhat malformed and unproductive. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Skykid wrote:I certainly don't revel in anyone's passing, but Ebert was a shockingly poor critic of film and I certainly won't miss people citing his input as some kind of gospel. That said RIP poor chap, hope you're in a better place.
That's just the thing - even critics are themselves a commodity. People liked or hated Ebert based on his personality and way of seeing things. I've enjoyed reading snippets of some of his reviews, but it's clear that he had a very idiosyncratic view. I guess the truth is that there are normal people who like a show, and then there are the academics - I don't mean that as a slam, but I mean the people who insist that even things which would drive Ebert to semi-incoherent agony (i.e. his Armageddon review) should be painted in shades of gray. Well, certainly the data-driven or Rotten Tomatoes view is that you can do this. But on the other hand I insist that he was right to be able to state that people have a right to walk out on a flop or even to accord them any kind of importance - even if they do, in some kind of way, have worth in the sense of a Platonic entity hovering in null space. Of course I suppose the same can be said about reviewers as well, even though they are people.