Well, in addition to Rob’s concise summary, there’s also been good critiques written by Xeni, Matthew Ingram, and Zeynep Tufekci that cover different angles. Most (all?) of those opinions have been praised by Lisa Adams herself, though I think this New Yorker piece most concisely addresses your question of why I called him an asshole (1).
Both columns betray discomfort with the public nature of Adams’s response to her illness. And both writers veil what appears to be personal distaste for Adams’s public display with high-minded questions about the ethics of prolonged care and of public self-revelation without examining the complexities of their own response. In this way, both columns are a stark and tone-deaf reminder of just how repressed and ahistorical our public relationship to dying and death is today. It’s a shame, as both writers touch on interesting questions about how we think about those issues, questions of the very sort that Adams has been trying to address in her blog posts and tweets.
- Well, this, in addition to many other things Keller has said and done over the years that also qualify.
