An Open Letter to Martha Stewart: IWSG

Alex J. Cavanaugh founded the IWSG to provide a safe venue for expressing our vulnerabilities and offering each other support. We're posting on the first Wednesday of every month. Please check out Alex’s blog to visit others’ posts. It’s an inspiring, fun group. Join us, if you haven't already! All that's required is an insecurity or two hundred.

In case you hadn’t heard, on October 13, when asked during an interview [here] if she thinks the social media is “a bit in poor taste,” Ms. Stewart replied that she has a “gripe” about that because "‘Who are these bloggers?’ They're not trained editors and writers at Vogue magazine. I mean, there are bloggers writing recipes that aren't tested, that aren't necessarily very good or are copies of everything that really good editors have created and done. Bloggers create kind of a popularity. But they are not the experts and we have to understand that."

My contribution this month is an open letter to Martha Stewart.
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Hey, Martie,

It’s Robyn – the little Jewish lady and schlocky dresser who interviewed you on June 3. We share an affinity for cucumbers, remember? That interview’s here. Anyway, I’m adding my response to the pile of hate you’ve received for your comments about the social media and, specifically, your attack on bloggers.

My gripe with you, aside from that mole protruding from your cheek and the morbidly dark roots sprouting from your ever inflating head, is the hefty gap that you maintain between yourself and humanity.

Who are those bloggers? you ask. Well, Mats, there are an estimated one billion of us. Surely, some of that billion have expertise. In fact, a portion of bloggers are blogging your recipes and craft ideas. Oh, and Martha, I visited your blog. {Psst, you’re one of those bloggers.} I suggest changing the title of your “Quintessential Autumn” post. Nobody has used the word “quintessential” since Jane Austen. She's been dead for a while.

You are correct, however. Many of us do have poor taste. We like it that way. Not to boast, but I’m fairly skilled at potentially offending large segments of the population.  Though I wish I was as savvy at exhibiting poor taste as some very popular blog friends, like Bryan Pedas at A Beer for the Shower, whose posts make anyone with a sense of humor spew bodily fluids that would propel you into cardiac arrest. Or Pat Hatt, whose creative and tactless rhymes have his following soaring well above 2000. There are also smaller bloggers like AlPenwasser, one of my favorites. He does offensive like nobody’s business. And,..I could go on.

Alex's Insecure Writer’s Support Group is over 300 strong. Alex knows, as do the rest of us, that the social media is about a give-and-take. It’s about connecting. We do this by acknowledging our lack of expertise, because being human means accepting our vulnerabilites. It also means laughing at absurdity and, well, people like you. Ultimately, though, it's about heart.

Despite his exceptional success as an author and blogger, Alex will readily say that he has no expertise. He’s just one of us. Whatever our individual strengths and weaknesses, my network of bloggers and I support each other through it all. That’s why we blog and keep blogging, and why we’ve formed a presence in cyberspace so strong that you’re threatened by us. We do it because we care about each other. We do it because we aren't experts of the upper echelon who spend weekends abroad riding horses in Northern France.

Though we wouldn’t mind a smidgen of your vast riches, Marts, we won’t sell out for any of it. We don’t care what we wear or if we can afford to buy an ounce of Ralph Lauren cologne. We’re just good people who boost each other through the struggles of writing and living in the real world. We're nothing like you, and proudly so. You, Ms. Stewart, have to understand that.