alt Hacker NewsI wish they were a bit more self reflective about this. The author says, “I’m not raising these points to get a dig in on Blow for a perspective I personally disagree with,” but come on, let’s be real. You absolutely are raising these points to get in a dig at him, if only because you know your audience will complain if you don’t. Like, I find Blow to be a huge blowhard (nominative determinism at work) but having played the Witness, you can absolutely write a review of that game without mentioning his politics and I seriously doubt that Order of the Sinking Star is different. If you want to write about his politics, that’s great, there’s a lot of grist there to discuss. But stop pretending you’re doing something other than opinion journalism
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Yeah. It's less "opinion journalism" and more "dig journalism". They are essentially trying to punish their political enemies by using every chance to mention the political stance of the enemy in question, so that the readers of the publication (who largely share their political opinion with the journalist) categorize him as "the enemy" rather than judging his work without prejudice.
It's a particularly dirty form of culture war. Rather than restricting their political disagreements to articles about the subject matter "out in the open", these journalists sneak in opportunities to throw shade at people in articles that aren't about politics at all. And in this case the journalist even has the gall of adding a faux innocent "Oh I’m not raising these points to get a dig in".