The Gift That Keeps On Giving

As I have written before, the internet is the greatest tool ever invented for public and profligate display of idiocy.

One of the great imbeciles of the worldwide web, William Eddins, whom I have had to take apart before, is at it again. Recently decrying the music of Arnold Schoenberg (spelled “Shoenberg” in the alternate universe in which Eddins resides), Eddins claimed that Schoenberg’s music was a principle cause of the decline in concert attendance in recent decades.

Eddins specifically invoked the music of Schoenberg to explain declining attendance in recent seasons at the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Eddins, alas, neglected to mention that the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra do not often program the music of Schoenberg, which is especially the case with the former ensemble.

Eddins’s statements about Schoenberg were the statements of a moron. He was, quite naturally, obliged to change his argument once challenged, and claim that in fact he had been preaching not against Schoenberg but against “orthodoxy”—whatever that is in Eddins’s muddled mind.

Since November 2008, when I took advantage of delicious opportunity and skewered Eddins, Eddins has provided countless additional fodder for rich mirth and glee. However, I never bothered to take advantage of the fresh material and engage in further merrymaking—after all, when the target is as unintelligent as Eddins, it becomes ungenerous to point out imbecility more than once or twice. The man’s stupidity speaks for itself.

Today, however, I could not help but notice that Randol Schoenberg took Eddins on. Schoenberg was all too happy to note, repeatedly, that Eddins is not the brightest bulb in the closet or the sharpest tool in the shed.

The sad part is that what Schoenberg wrote was probably over Eddins’s head.