@wandeljw,
wandeljw wrote:Top Ten Lists are always debatable, especially when they reflect the views of only one person.
Well, that's rather like saying that the shape of the earth is always debatable. If I were to say, for instance, that
Citizen Kane is a better movie than
The Godfather, that would certainly be debatable, and there are good arguments to be made on either side of that issue. On the other hand, if I were to say that
Dude, Where's My Car? is a better movie than
The Godfather, that would only be debatable in the same sense that the shape of the earth is debatable. There will always be some people who will think that the earth is flat, just as there will always be some people (or at least one person) who think that it's tough to choose between
Citizen Kane and
The Paper on a list of great journalism movies. To say, then, that the inclusion of
The Paper in preference to
Citizen Kane is "debatable" is to state a meaningless truism. What's important here is not that the author's choice is debatable -- everything, after all, is subject to debate -- but that the author's choice is
absolutely incomprehensible, and it calls into question not just that particular choice but the qualifications of the author to make
any choices for a list of this kind. Just as a clock striking thirteen calls into question whether the clock is capable of keeping any accurate time, choosing
The Paper in preference to
Citizen Kane calls into question the ability of this reviewer to make a list of great journalism movies.
