Continuation of the "Haaretz" all-time ranking - bottom of the table

Forgive me if I'm a sentimental bitch, but this is not just a summary of Haaretz, or of a glorious critical career. It's a summary of the period when I believed in Haaretz, and perhaps also believed in other things (that were sold to me in Haaretz), since I started reading it as a pup. Since then, I've grown up - and Haaretz has regressed. I've become wiser - and Haaretz has become more foolish. The internet has risen higher and higher in the realms of content and doctrine - and Haaretz has degenerated. The newspaper for people who think themselves - has lost its importance and itself. But I still remember the time when "written in Haaretz" was a mark of quality. No more

The Judge: Son of a Bitch  (Source)

The scores are out of 10. In fact, all the groups at the bottom of the table have long since been relegated - only there's no league. Let's hope they replace coaches and players and return to the game, because they're making Ziffer look good - and that's really bad (the fact that Ziffer misses half the time in front of an open goal - has already been discussed in the upper part of the table: here). Here are those struggling at the bottom, causing the bitch mainly grief (animals) and sadness (in the dog's view):



Lisa Peretz improved the critical level of the supplement, especially at the beginning of her tenure, but not in every parameter, and mainly: not in the same distribution - the distribution expanded far beyond the margins of the road. Indeed, a supplement is measured by its outstanding reviews, where there has been a noticeable improvement (Wizen makes me wag my tail every time I see his name. And there's an urgent need to import his new house critic in Dchak - Yochai Jerafi, an amazing discovery! Where does Wizen find them?). But a supplement is measured no less by its disgraceful reviews, in which it descends into the drainage ditch, and which show that there's no one to rely on and no one to lean on and a word is not a word, and there are many such - and without bottom. It's not uncommon to encounter an entire book supplement that doesn't contain a single review of intellectual, critical value, or just worth reading.

Also, the trend of current affairs invading criticism (yes, it brings clicks), which is expressed in reviews by celebrities (say, loser politicians) lacking critical talent, but (you should know!) that they are people of the book, namely prize people - is invalid and hollow. The same goes for all kinds of one-book or two-book reviewers, fleeting guests, whose visit and criticism passed as quickly as their arrival and disappearance (just like the books they review). These uninvited reviewers (and sometimes also non-readers) are often chosen for clickbait reasons. All this accumulates into the central disease of "Books" since time immemorial - the almost complete absence of regular critics, not to mention house writers, to the point of losing the house. Regular critics, of stature and panoramic view of Hebrew literature (deep into the past and wide across the present), who are taste-makers and creators in culture - and whose good or bad word can launch the career of a debut writer or bring down an established author - are not outdated diadochi, but the bread and butter of a healthy cultural system, one with hierarchies and a center, and where there is resonance and meaning to the piles of books coming out as a voice crying in the wilderness.

The significance of "Books'" failure is that we don't recognize the most important and innovative voices currently operating in the field of prose and poetry, and are flooded with unfiltered but fashionable garbage, and worse - PR. In fact, from a cultural perspective, more than "Books" contributes to Hebrew literature, it sabotages it and empties it of value, while corrupting standards, because it becomes a kind of infinite, interchangeable production line, lacking any coherence of books and reviews, without discussion (meaning - several reviews on the same book, marking it as valuable, God forbid), and that simply come one after another, without any structure or trend or systemic insight, ad infinitum. Cat. Cube. 18. Parshandatha. Hill. Telecom. Beast-of-forest. Pump. Kafka. Interdisciplinarity. Second book of cat. Pump pump. Mannerism. You get the idea.

And when there is already a regular critic - the choice is terrible. Yotam Reuveni as a regular poetry critic is a fall that casts a heavy shadow on his entire enterprise (who wants to read poetry by someone who exposes such a shallow conception of poetry?). As a critic, he has no tool other than personal taste, and one learns nothing from his reviews. He also doesn't always understand the poetry he writes about, and conversely, a lot of dreck receives appreciation from him. The ability to distinguish between kitsch and innovation doesn't exist, even though this is the first working tool in a poetry critic's toolbox - which for him is completely empty, writing of internal resonance (and indeed, this is the only tool he has). The table of critics that follows him is a worthless internal industry event of no value to the reader and anti-cultural (even more than bestseller tables), which reduces texts to a number, but at least contributed some advertisements to the supplement. It would have been better to stay with the bestsellers of independent stores and Indiebook alone, or to import lists from across Europe and the world, so that we at least know what's going on in culture outside the navel. And the prodigal son should be returned immediately - Orin Morris! One of the two best prose critics in the country (the second - Arik Glasner), after the void left by Amnon Navot. There are people who need to be preserved at all costs, and a good editor knows this (a bad editor thinks he's more important than his best critic).



A drop in ranking, as I wrote here. It's time for Rolnik to loosen his ideological chokehold and allow the supplement to develop in new and more interesting directions than continuing his increasingly degenerating and outdated legacy, which has turned into church preaching. What about the exciting developments in economic history? What about academic innovations in economic research, style blogs like "Minority Opinion", which is more intelligent than all of The Marker combined? What about financial guidance in the style of HaSolidit and its ilk, which is relevant to readers? And what about deeper coverage of fintech, the future of money and contracts in blockchain possibilities, and other connections between economy and technology that are not exhausted in the genre of praising the righteous and Hasidic tales of startup success and newly rich? What about basic economic data analysis à la Tom Sadeh and the like, or analysis of deep trends from around the globe for example?

And what about a head-to-head battle, backed by data and with multiple debaters, between libertarians and leftists? Why is there no trace in The Marker of the central and ever-boiling intellectual struggle in the field? (Which of course chose the right, Rolnikian position, so really why the unnecessary argument? Discussions are for Jews, in the Gemara, and in our church there's dogma). The economic discourse on social networks is flourishing, and in The Marker it's withering. But despite everything, the bitch believes in The Marker's future, because economics is increasingly taking a more interesting and central place in human thinking, and it would be a great shame if this is not reflected in a more intelligent discourse about it. A low-level national discourse on economics is not only a first-degree economic danger - but also a cultural one. In this sense, the Feiglin phenomenon is a symptom of the void in The Marker - and of its becoming a mouthpiece for a conception (on The Marker's Yom Kippur: here).



The opinion pages (in all sections) are a significant weakness of "Haaretz", and stand out negatively compared to the rest of the newspaper, and it has already become a kind of shame to write in them. The editors will always prefer clichéd, moralistic, petty, predictable and baked discourse that has long since reached exhaustion - and this is one of the reasons for the decline of the Israeli left and intelligentsia (and also a symptom of course, as in any disease). Either writers of stature no longer exist today, or their backs are not bent enough to enter the gates of "Haaretz". On the other hand, when the discourse is sub-par, who wants to participate in it? Only professional nudniks. In such a situation, the only solution is revolutionary: to reset the opinion pages. Replace editors with first-rate intellectuals and not tenth-rate ones, fire all regular writers (none of them will be missed by anyone), and turn to a series of first-rate writers.

Who should be the opinion editor of Haaretz? Say: Assaf Sagiv. Say: Ofri Ilany. Maybe: Yaron London. And even: Benny Ziffer (as an opinion editor he could actually be much better than as a culture and literature editor. He missed his calling!). The bitch doesn't even know who the opinion editor is today, but he's doing a terrible job, which cannot stem only from constraints, but from lack of stature. There is no other explanation why it's easy to find "opinion articles" on Facebook at a much higher level than those in Haaretz. The opinion pages have become a platform for people who have nothing to say, and therefore people who have something to say have no platform, and what's left? Facebook. And this is in reverse to the cliché (in opinions in Haaretz?) that discourse on social networks degrades discourse in the newspaper - exactly the opposite. The opinion pages in Haaretz resemble a social-cliché opinion conversation in the typical Israeli leftist salon (on the lower floor, including the character of the nudnik right-wing uncle, put there just for the illusion of discussion and emphasizing our enlightenment), and not an ideological laboratory, and therefore there is almost never a new idea, breaking conventions and changing perceptions. So in the absence of positive creative libido, they have become pages of complaints and settling scores. And Alter-man? Calling him that is simply a disgrace / He should learn from Tzur Ehrlich how to do it right. But the comparison to the Seventh Column is in place - and colors the opinion pages in the color befitting them: the deep red of shame.



I wrote about Gallery here and here, but maybe I shouldn't have written about it in the first place. It's simply "Haaretz for youth who think (themselves)" - and not intended for me as a reader. If I feel that Gallery doesn't respect intelligence, it's probably because it's not intended for intelligence. Just like fish, you need to sell newspapers, and this is the newspaper that wraps the newspaper. I wouldn't have addressed the matter at all if I wasn't frustrated by occasionally catching my beloved in bed reading Gallery (!). But on the other hand, she also really enjoyed "Married at First Sight" (I just hope she's not straight in her soul, or - in Gallery's case - trashy in her soul). In any case, she's beautiful, and love covers all transgressions, even the only part of Haaretz that deserves bitches' piss and readers' boycott, because even by Haaretz's deteriorating standards - Gallery is a shame to the rest of the newspaper.

Perhaps Gallery can be summed up in one ridiculous and amusing phenomenon, which testifies to the depth of this supplement's DNA, and that is the phenomenon of "coronations". If Gallery was an unpretentious low culture magazine, a cheap average and ordinary product of its kind, it would receive a yawning canine attitude like the TV listings table. But Gallery pretends to be a "culture" supplement, and out of some deep internal corruption that it tries to spread among its ignorant readers, it often crowns countless superlative crowns in each issue, disconnected beyond measure from any true value and insulting (to the reader): "The most important writer in America today", "The most groundbreaking musician in the world in recent years", "The greatest cultural figure in the observable universe", "The leading intellectual in Israel", "A masterpiece", "Rare art", and the greater the inflation - the worse the smell it leaves behind in the sensitive nose of the bitch. Therefore, in the same coin, Gallery is "The most disgraceful supplement in the observable cultural universe", and "The insulting peak of Haaretz newspaper".