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Hi. It's me.

This article from The Walton Tribune, whatever that is, is a couple weeks old. I set it aside after reading only the headline and forgot about it until today. I thought it would be an interesting little diatribe on the disappearance of book reviews in major papers and the depressing, though overdiscussed topic that people are reading less and less. And in a way it was. Mr. S. Milligan, however, decided to turn it into a self-righteous whine about how nobody as smart or cultured as him is being given a forum to discuss "good" literature anymore.

Like countless other deluded, uppity smart people -- you know, the kind that made you decide against pursuing that Ph.D. -- he seems to think that certain mediums of expression (like the Internet) are somehow beneath him because their contributors are second-class idiots who think Jane Eyre is a character on the O.C. Observe:

Despite the claims of Internet equality, if you've ever read the average online review of anything, you know that issues like intelligence or writing ability rarely come into play on the web.

First of all, Internet equality? What does that even mean? Secondly, shut your mouth, Milligan. Honey, there are numerous print publications, considered legitimate, where intelligence and writing ability have little to do with what they produce. You should know. Furthermore, if you can't find anything of quality on this new-fangled Internet contraption, then you clearly are not looking hard enough. Sure, any moron can set up his own blog and spout nonsense for the world to read, and there is a lot of dreck to trudge through, but I will not sit and listen to you blustering on about a total void of intellectual material on literature. I subscribe to a lot of quality blogs about quality literature, not to mention a couple podcasts and a general sense of where to look for more. The Internet is not so large and confusing as to be unnavigable in this regard.

I also don't appreciate Milligan's tone, which implies that only brainy, "literature" literature is worth the time of the intellectual elite. Just because a book does not have the empty validation of sitting on the proper shelf in the book store does not mean it holds no deeper value than entertainment. I'm gonna go right out and say that I'm a smart person. I get literature. I can read difficult works and grasp the secret special between-the-lines ivory tower implications. I promise that these standards that you so prize, Mr. Milligan, are present in more than one "mindless" book with a dragon on the cover. Lots of it is crap, sure, but let's not judge books by their... well, you know.

I don't disagree with our humble journalist. It's upsetting to see book reviews removed from newspapers. I'm on board with this. But maybe instead of complaining about it, you could reach out a bit further to look for the community of elitists you so desperately crave, and if you still fail to find them (though I know they're out there, I've tripped over their websites before) then do it yourself.