Stephen Young
Slow Your Roll There, Buzz Bissinger.
Hey Buzz,
You doin' OK there, bro?
Seems like you kinda had a rough go of things yesterday on Twitter.
What happened, man?
Out of nowhere, you started lambasting the entire city of Dallas, repeatedly slamming various aspects of our community, saying that the nation's IQ would go up 50 points if our city fell into a sinkhole and telling us to have sexual intercourse with ourselves — and “hard” at that.
Also, you used the word “douchejuice” a lot.
We know you're upset. We're aware of the fact that your new memoir, Father's Day, kinda got slammed in what you call the “Dallas Morning Snooze.” We can also surmise from your Twitter account that your May 24 book signing at the Barnes & Noble on Northwest Highway didn't go as well as you'd hoped.
We're sorry to hear that. But — and I mean, c'mon, as a father, you should know this — are the actions of a few really all that indicative of us as a whole?
And were our actions all that bad? Really. Be honest with yourself. Were they bad enough to merit your claims that we, as a community, aren't aware of what half of the letters of the alphabet are or what Oxford University is?
Probably not, bro. Probably not. Especially not when you consider that your whole rant on Twitter yesterday was rife with contradictions. You hate Dallas, you say, but you're cool with Fort Worth. Right? I mean, you did say that. And yet you can't seem to grasp the fact that the author of your Morning News review teaches out in Fort Worth at Texas Christian University.
Worse, your defense for your actions — “All those morons trashing me for not liking personal attack review, you'd all be bawling like an iddy biddy baby in mama's arms” — sounded pretty condescending, broseph.
You took things a little far, that's all we're saying. And you weren't even that clever about it.
“By the way,” you tweeted at one point yesterday, “what does Big D really stand for–dumb, dim-witted, dull, or dead on arrival?”
Way to prove that you know the letter D, brah. We're, like, totally impressed.
And, hey, this is random, but why'd you have to bring Bret Easton Ellis into this shitstorm of yours yesterday? Why slam him? That dude's awesome.
Honestly, we used to think you were pretty awesome, too. We loved the book Friday Night Lights when we were assigned to read it for summer reading in middle school. We thought it was pretty dope that your book about Odessa spawned a decent movie and a pretty great TV series — all while inspiring the awesomely bad James Van Der Beek vehicle, Varsity Blues, too.
We know you're no one-hit wonder, either. Your narrative on disgraced journalist Stephen Glass work inspired the journalistic cautionary tale Shattered Glass, which is a movie we like to watch when it shows up in the HBO Zone rotation.
We used to think you were awesome. Real talk. And we're sorry to hear that one of your sons was born with developmental issues. That had to have been hard on you.
We're more sorry, though, that, even through enduring a thing like that, you never learned that it's not all that cool to negatively judge people you don't really know.
Mostly, though, we're sorry that a grown man born Harry Gerard Bissinger calls himself “Buzz” while wearing a straight face. And we're sorry that, at 57, you still haven't learned to brush off negative criticism.
Since we're kind of on a roll now, here are some other things we're sorry about: that you don't have a better sense of humor; that today, even after a night's rest, you're still not over your beef with Dallas; that the only guy who panned out in your story about high school superstar football players was Jessie Armstead, a dude who didn't even play for your adored Permean Panthers; and, lastly, that you just seem like a guy with a lot of issues.
Maybe Van Der Beek said it best in his terrible Texas accent in Varsity Blues. You know the part we're talking about, right? The part when he angrily whips around and yells at his father? You know the quote, it was in all the trailers: “I don't want your life.”
He's right, you know. Despite all your awards and accolades, we don't want your life. No, not because you had a developmentally challenged son. We're not pricks.
We don't want your life because you're a huge tool.
C'mon. Your event in Dallas wasn't well-attended? Blame your publicist, the person whose job it is to make sure that shit pops. You had a leaky A/C in your hotel room? Call the fucking front desk, you incompetent imbecile.
Actually, don't even worry about it. Do whatever you want. We don't care. You lost our respect back then when you started coming up with different possible definitions for “Big D.”
Seriously, are you 12 years old?
Get a grip, man. Maybe, I dunno, develop a little.
