Tom Shales, why you gotta be like that?

I've never read a column by Tom Shales that left me feeling good. Usually I feel either pissed off or grimy or some combination of the two. I was kind of surprised to see his blurb say he won a Pulitzer and he uses humor in his kol. I wouldn't have thought to use the words funny or Pulitzer to describe his work. His number one emotion seems to be bitterness and if you'd asked me I would have guessed he hated his job and wished he could be, oh I don't know, a janitor because then when he something that bothered him in the line of work he could clean it up.

But I digress. He wrote something about Stephen King's new thing running on TNT, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and he managed to draw me in from my email because the headline sounded positive. "A Delightful Scream: TNT's 'Nightmares' Toys With the Mind"

That sounds pretty groovy, doesn't it? Sadly he immediately launches into an old and dull refrain, how much he hates Mr. King. He says the same kinds of things people have been saying about Mr. King for the last twenty years, except instead of saying Mr. King could publish his laundry list, he says his grocery list. Sigh. This is so trite and wearying. Really, we do understand that you can't stand Mr. King and you think we're all subhuman for enjoying his work.

But then Mr. Shales kind of reluctantly says that something good has come out of this whole King thing, he likes the first story in the series, Battlefield. But God forbid he should leave it at that, he has to say the story reminds him of a TV show from the 70's and he spends a fair amount of ink/bytes talking about that show. But he says more than Battlefield reminds him of Trilogy of Terror, he uses the words plagiarism and lawyers, albeit in a, hold on, don't get them quite yet kind of way.

Then he says this:

For the record, TNT says "Battleground" originated in a 1978 King short-story collection called "Nightshift." That would be three years after "Trilogy of Terror" aired on ABC and the toothy fetish doll chased poor Ms. Black hither, thither and everywhere else. Coincidental, or copycatty? Truth -- or fiction? Genius -- or big thief?

The world may never know.

Mr. Shales, the world already knows. I spent less than three minutes online and I saw that my memory of the book was correct in that the copyright page clearly states "Battlefield appeared in Cavalier, September 1972."

Three minutes, Mr. Shales, that's all it would have taken to keep you from looking pretty silly.