Dear Roger Ebert:

I have long been an admirer of yours, and a devotee of your finely tuned mind for film criticism. Even when we disagree, strongly, about a film, you make your side understood with humor and wisdom.

I know you have been troubled now with chronic health issues, and I just wanted to take this time to say that, if you need any of my extra organs, you are welcome to them. Just name it.

True — I had a plan to save them for my wife, whom I dearly love, but reading the movie reviews of your web editor, Jim Emerson, have convinced me otherwise.

I assume — wrongly, it is hoped — that you or the higher-ups at the Chicago Sun Times are grooming him as some sort of replacement critic should you pass on.  I have realized, after reading many of his reviews over the past year, that I must do everything within my power to reduce the chances of this ever happening, even in theory.

I had considered making a movie about the fictitious assassination of Jim Emerson, but I am at heart a non-violent man. Plus, such a film would not have much of a niche market, and would surely be a money-loser, even if I ordered the cameraman to use very jiggly hand-held techniques.

So, I'm back to my original, altruistic impulse. If you must increase, and I must decrease, so be it.

I hope you are not troubled by this offer. It is not the vain ramblings of Your Number One Fan, but something I have sanely concluded must happen, after reading "criticism" such as this, from a review of Jonestown:

The face of Jim Jones is, from a slightly different angle, the face of Stalin or Mao, of Christian or Islamic fundamentalism, of Baathism or American neo-conservatism — any kind of ideology, rooted in certainty and the arrogance of infallibility, pursued with singleminded fervor, intolerant of free thinking or dissent, and that results, inevitably, in deadly consequences.

So you can see, of course, that it would be insanity to want to live in a society where this is what passes for FILM criticism. It is barely tolerable that this would generally be considered as passing for intelligent political or religious criticism, as the author is having trouble distinguishing between gradations of ideology ranging from the Soviet Purges, through the Cultural Revolution, Hussein's Iraq, the World Trade Center and the endemic oppression, torture and murder of rival factions, Jonestown and ... wait for it ... Christian fundamentalism and American neo-conservatism? Seriously?? Why not just take the gloves off and say "the face of Jim Jones is the face of Karl Rove!" and then laugh cackle hideously?

"The face of Jim Jones is the face of Billy Graham!" Ah, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA !!

Why not say Bill and Hillary Clinton left a "pile of dead bodies" behind them on their rise to the presidency?

Yoinks.

Tell you what: for a vocal chord transplant, and a spare kidney, you let me be your web editor, and Mr. Emerson can have Wrymouth.com for a soapbox.

Cordially,

Wrymouth
(A Positive)