DrRich Finally Posts an Introduction to This Blog

Posted on January 15, 2009
Filed Under An Introduction to Covert Rationing |

This morning, DrRich has added a permanent link, now appearing in the rightmost column, that provides an introduction to the Covert Rationing Blog.

Yes, yes, DrRich knows.

This enterprise has been up and running for nearly two years. So now, after all this time, DrRich finally decides to post an introduction? What gives?

How to explain it, loyal reader?

As some of you may know, DrRich is fond of irony. Irony (and DrRich apologizes for spelling this out; he realizes that most of his readers understand irony, and even appreciate it) is a rhetorical device whereupon the writer intentionally creates a discrepancy or an incongruity between what he says and what he actually means.

The writer may do this for several reasons, but irony is a particularly useful technique for pointing out the inherent absurdity of a particular system or situation. By taking some feature of the absurd system and extending it just a bit, you often wind up with a conclusion which anyone would agree is ridiculous (thereby underlining the inherent absurdity). But since the writer’s intentional exaggeration is often alarmingly close to what defenders of the absurd system are actually saying, it can be quite challenging for some to understand that what the writer is doing is attempting to be ironic, and not serious.

That’s what makes irony so much fun.

And accordingly, DrRich has a collection of priceless e-mails from readers who have been scandalized by some of the “positions” he has taken, such as advocating the aggressive marketing of assisted suicide, decrying efforts to reduce the number of uninsured Americans, or declaring that there’s still not enough inefficiency in the healthcare system. And while DrRich usually delights in such responses to his posts, on occasion he has felt that, perhaps, he should tone it down a bit.

The issue came to the fore relatively recently when he submitted a post to one of the periodic blog reviews that you’ve all seen (DrRich won’t say which one, but it’s something like Medical Grand Rounds or Health Wonk Review, or one of those similar exercises), and it was turned down.  Apparently that week’s host completely missed the submission’s ironic bent (and you’ll agree that if such a thing occurs, it will likely seem as if DrRich is making some amazing assertions).

Ok, it happens - sometimes his irony is more subtle than broad, and even DrRich isn’t entirely sure when he’s stopped being ironic and has begun being serious. But come on! Being turned down by a weekly blog review which (Dear God, by all appearances) routinely takes all comers? Why, that’s like walking into an evangelical church in the Bowery and asking to be saved, and being told, “Sorry. I just don’t think you’re salvation material.”

When DrRich corresponded with the host who had rejected him, explaining what was going on (i.e., it’s supposed to be ironic, and even a little funny), the host replied that (while now he or she gets it) he or she would consider including the post only if DrRich would add a clear explanation as to what he really thought about the topic at hand, with a couple of suitable examples to prove it.

Did Jonathan Swift have to mop up his Modest Proposal with a few paragraphs on why he really didn’t think the Irish should roast their babies on a spit, and that, indeed, he thought that instead of asking the Irish to consume each other, he actually would advocate, if asked, casting about for some more suitable means of relieving the famine? Not that DrRich recalls.

So DrRich did not revise his posting in order to explain its irony, and accordingly it was not included in the blog review, and he’s OK with that. But he has spent a few weeks thinking about this episode. If a highly intelligent and respected policy expert was thrown off by DrRich’s style, maybe the fault lies with DrRich. There is, after all, a serious purpose to this blog, and if DrRich is causing misdirection in some of his readers, that is not a good thing.

Maybe, DrRich considered, he should go back to writing in a dry, straightforward, more academic style regarding this very serious topic. (He was forced by medical editors to do that for decades in his past life, and he was very good at it.)

Naw.

So, as a compromise, DrRich has (finally) composed an “introduction” to this blog, which will reside permanently and prominently in the Vital Info section, and there remain readily accessible, and to which he can point sundry people as needed, to let them know that he actually has a well-reasoned thesis he’s trying to explicate here.

In this new and permanent introduction, DrRich even explains why he frequently employs the literary device of irony,  and why he has assumed for this endeavor a somewhat arrogant, somewhat pompous persona (that would be me, DrRich), and why he affects a third-person form of communication, like an NFL wide receiver. (There actually is a reason for all of it.)

As for whose fault it is that some of his readers are missing the irony, it is not for DrRich to say. Many are the writers who greatly overestimate their own skill, blaming their lack of success on ignorant readers. DrRich does not do that, and accepts the possibility that it is he who is irony-challenged and not those others. He does console himself, however, with the knowledge that even his revered predecessor, Mr. Swift, had his Modest Proposal taken all too seriously by some very prominent personages, and as a result, had some ’splaining to do.

Comments

One Response to “DrRich Finally Posts an Introduction to This Blog”

  1. Dr. Val on January 26th, 2009 8:04 pm

    A cursory review of academic papers, articles, and literature tells you all you need to know about the average wit of your peers. That is all I have to say.

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