To the Editors of Time Magazine:

I am writing you this letter in reference to Claire Suddath's most recent article, "Mourning the Death of Handwriting".  In truth, I would have preferred to write you this letter by hand, but I worry that the irony of such a thing might cause Ms Suddath's head to explode.  

This was perhaps one of the worst articles I've read in a very long time.  The mixture of Ms Suddath's sad limitations of journalistic scope plus the transparently cavalier attitude with which she shared that scope both offended my intelligence, and  left me as a reader (to put it bluntly) seriously pissed off.

The arrogance and cynicism that Ms Suddath employs in the closing remarks of this piece are not only flippant and simplistic - but they even manage, in an act of surprising journalistic alchemy, to render every single word that comes before that conclusion entirely pointless.

If the issue itself is something so easily shrugged away, what's the value in writing about it at all?  Why did I bother to read this article, if the author could so glibly shuck the issue's relevance with the same dearth of intellectual consideration and wit that is most often expressed in a Facebook or Twitter post.

I'd suggest that you fire Ms Suddath, but to be honest the problem exists with your editors as well.  Whomever it was that misconstrued Ms Suddath's transparent, nihilistic, 20-something blather as wit shouldn't be editing Time Magazine - he or she should be writing for "Red Eye" on FOX News - a show now famous for its criminally simplistic interpretations of complex or otherwise important subjects.

"And let's be honest: the Declaration of Independence is already hard to read."

It is not my intention to fetishize the Declaration of Independence, but a statement like this is entirely unacceptable.  Not because it disrespects the document - the Declaration of Independence has no feelings to bruise.  The problem with this line is that it insults the intelligence of your readers.  A line like this hinges on the assumption that those people who read it will view one of the most important political documents in all of Western history as an excuse to get cute - as a punch line.  That they're more than willing to let paragraph after paragraph of cultural analysis be washed away with little more than a lazy zinger.  A joke.

Unfortunately, the only joke I see here is Claire Suddath.  And it isn't a very funny joke, at that.

I say this as a long-time reader of your magazine, AND a member of Ms Suddath's generation - as I am only two years older than she. 

It seems clear to me that it is your intention in publishing Ms Suddath's work to somehow speak to my generation.  That you have somehow gleaned that we are a population of vapid nihilists whose general response to any issue or crisis is to shrug, and snort, and take a swill from our PBR... satisfied in the knowledge that we're above such issues.  Because nothing means anything. 

Well I'm asking you to stop that.  Stop it.  Please stop pandering to the lowest common denominator of my generation - employing writers who infect us all with such flimsy and ultimately frivolous nonsense, masquerading as news, commentary and humor.

Ms Suddath's work is without a shred of wit, complexity or intellectual depth - and it's time you put a stop to it.

Sincerely,

a.

Comments

[Poopy Pants]

God.. how old are you? 200? 300? Hell.. are you an Egyptian Mummy who just came back to life?

[EBWY!]

Yawn.

[c]

Interested to know whether you actually sent this to them because I agree wholeheartedly.