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Though it happened on the pages of the apparently profitable Huffington Post, it could have just as easily have been on an episode of the Hills. Dreamboat playwright, blogger, and writer for ABC's Brother and Sisters Jon Robin Baitz responded at length to an incredibly patronizing and, well, shitty piece Times Theater critic Charles Isherwood wrote. Isherwood had wondered "whatever it is television and movie writers do when they are not cooking up dialogue for detectives, superheroes or nerdy, horny teenagers." "You, sir, are a dick," Baltz replied. (Okay, paraphrasing!)

Here's the actual burn:

Mr. Isherwood, as a critic, will never be noted for his generosity of spirit. He is not Harold Clurman. He tends to be waspish, dismissive, cool, and brittle - as a writer. He can be gratuitously insulting, and his reputation is marred by the general consensus that a good mind is not matched by a particularly big heart. There is a whiff of Grinch in his criticism. Mr. Brantley, more and more seems like a breathless writer of gossip and gush for fan mags, and his intelligence - which again is not in question - seems to fail when it comes down to the big picture. The Times critics present themselves as advocates for consumers, and not as advocates for the theater itself. Unlike Clurman,
Ken Tynan, say, or even Frank Rich, who could be withering but always managed to let it be known that he was passionate for new voices, passionate for promise, and uncompromisingly rigorous, as he is as an op-ed writer on Sundays. Speaking of Sundays, the Times used to have a Sunday critic, but have dropped that, thereby handing a monopoly of opinion to Isherwood and Brantley....

I suggest that the Times critics re-read Tynan, for instance, who was funny and could be ruthless, but was always on the side of the artist, and never innocently hid behind the pretense of being in the hire of the cultural wing of Consumer Reports. All things are connected, Charles (and Ben). Reading your essay yesterday, it occurred to me that you are suffering from that most modern of diseases - a soul-deep isolation, and a growing dislocation — a place from which being a critic of the theater, is dangerous, given how communal the art is.