A Well-Reasoned Ripping Apart of Dan Neil’s Ripping Apart of Alex Bogusky

Following up on our post from last week about LA Times reporter Dan Neil‘s tearing apart ad man Alex Bogusky‘s new book Baked In, the affronted author has decided to reply to the bad review with a bad review of his own, though not with his own mightier-than-sword pen. Bogusky has posted on his blog an unpublished letter to the Times‘ editors, written by fellow ad man Ernest Lupinacci, which attempts to take Neil and his review down a few pegs. There are certainly some well-reasoned thoughts therein, and delivered very well (so much so that we worried that maybe we were a little harsh in our initial post when we sorta kinda sided with the review). But as we reread, we think Neil still has the upper hand, given some of Lupinacci’s odd arguments (Bogusky himself admits, “Sometimes Ernest is so smart I have no idea what he’s saying”) and Bogusky’s opening statements (he brings up that the reviewer usually works for the paper’s automotive section, which is interesting, but we don’t understand why that disqualifies Neil from having an opinion). But your opinion on the debate is entirely your own and we will say no more about it (unless, god forbid, there’s a reaction to the reaction to the reaction).

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting this Thursday, February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Michael Brito (Edelman Digital), and Tim Devane (bitly). Register now.