The Gideonse Bible   With the beard? Yeah, you!

A couple weeks ago, I woke up on Sunday morning, stumbled into Rob’s living room, and he said, "Look at the Book Review." And there was a little–badly pixilated–picture of the cover of Bad Cat. The book had been on the Times bestseller list for a couple weeks, so I guess some genius over there decided it was time to comment on the book. But Dwight Garner decided to throw a quiet hissy fit. Phht. I’ve never physically met Dwight, but back in 1999, he edited my Salon.com review of Stagestruck. He seemed level-headed and kind. But based on his take on Bad Cat, his sense of humor seems to be, well, a bit bad. Or is that really the problem? Let’s look at what he wrote.

Another small book that — inexplicably, to cat-avoiders everywhere — became a phenomenon of sorts during the holidays was a pocket-size volume called ”Bad Cat,” which is No. 4 on this week’s paperback advice, how-to and miscellaneous list. Compiled by Jim Edgar, ”Bad Cat” feels like tomorrow’s garage sale item, here today. It provides a gallery of photographs of disgruntled felines, with sub-”Garfield” captions on the order of: ”I don’t need to hear about your day. Just open the can.” A funnier impulse buy that sold well through the holidays — it is No. 23 on the extended…

Even the folks I know who I think have senses of humor less keen than, say, a banana slug think Bad Cat is screamingly funny (even if a few of the pages are more "Garfield" than "Far Side"). My mother and aunt, not known for their pointed senses of late 90s irony, find the book funny. And so do Frank and Audrey, my arbiters of high edge-fest comedy. Rob, not known for his belly laughing, loves the book. Humor is not something you can fake. You can’t pretend to laugh. You can pretend to like Picasso or appreciate fried liver-n-onions. So, this sub-"Garfield" description is mindboggling. "Garfield" is about as funny as rickets–it sounds like it might be funny, but then it turns out that it sucks. And Dwight deliberately chose one the dull, Borscht-Belt quotes, instead of "I know he’s passed out but his mouth is open," and didn’t mentioned the non sequitur hobbies, like "decoupage."

The reason the book is successful is not because of cat lovers. Dwight, for all his brilliant New York Times wisdom, is utterly out of touch with the consumer and with market behavior. Cat lovers enjoy the book, but it is cat haters buying for cat likers who have propelled the book onto all the bestseller lists.

Speaking of cats, one of mine–that nudge Betsy–keeps jumping on my desk while I’m typing this. I have a glass of wine and my dinner on my desk, too, so Betsy is so, so, so unwanted at this time.

Maybe calling them "haters" is extreme. But it is the people who see the evil and the ambiguity in cats who love this book. They are the ones who can laugh at anthropomorphizing the fury little terrors. True cat people–ya know, old ladies with "hording syndrome"–don’t get the book.

Dwight didn’t get it. And Dwight wouldn’t get any cat book. He really shouldn’t have reviewed it. But the Times has problems in that area. They assign reviews to critics who aren’t qualified to review their subjects. They are often qualified to review many things, but not what they’ve been assigned to critique. They are asked to write the review because they are opposed to the idea of their subject and thus the quality of said subject is irrelevant. Just its existence is worth attacking.

Maybe I’m being too abstract. I’ll give you another example. Virginia Heffernan went after the "Alias" because she is opposed to both Jennifer Garner and comic books and any combination therein. And she goes after the duo with snide bitchiness masked as multiple-claused (i.e. "brilliant") analysis:

But if Ms. Garner’s winning modes — smiling and dimply, or precociously solemn, jaw set like an Eagle Scout — seem merely like two tricks she’s being forced to repeat in place of acting, then the series is a bore.
Translation: Jennifer Garner is too successful at playing a sexy secret agent, so she couldn’t possibly have any talent!

Let’s be honest. Many of us don’t like comic books and have feigned interest in their jumpy bif-bam fighting scenes and the way they redeem loser guys, only to impress and minister to those loser guys.
Translation: J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, Bryan Singer, Stan Lee, and all those other millionaires: Loooosers!

This is the sort of hostility that gets rap critics shot: Those rappers are rich and loved by the masses, so they must be dumb and evil. Me? I’m a poor journalist, ergo I’m the real deal.

If Ginger is opposed to the entire idea of a spy show with far-fetched stories and scantily clad stars, then she should review "Masterpiece Theater" and leave "Alias" to the writers who respect the genre. (Actually, Ginger sounds less like a lover of serious art and more like a spoiled cheerleader who doesn’t like the spotlight shifted to imaginative boys.) There’s a reason Janet Maslin reviews Grisham and Michiko Kakutani reviews Roth. Maslin likes popular fiction; she has a vested interest in its success. Critics shouldn’t criticize for the sake of being critical, for the sake of being mean, for the sake of tearing down something built up by fans whose adolescence you disapprove of. Critics should be fans who hate to be disappointed, not snipers looking for targets.