Loyalty: Will Leitch and Roger Ebert

I’m a firm believer in the idea that the deepest circle of hell — which is made of ice, remember, not fire — is reserved for traitors. People who stab their friends, mentors, and givers-of-aid in the back are the lowest of the low. Moved by the recent profile of him in Esquire, Deadspin’s editor emeritus Will Leitch recalls his own flirtation with that frozen ring of hell:

Because I was 19, I took this as an invitation to keep bothering Ebert, and over the next two years, I emailed him regularly, with questions about my career, with movie reviews I’d written and hoped he would offer tips on, with requests for advice on writing, on life, on the tough job market that awaited me upon graduation. Ebert wrote back to every single one, with lengthy and heartfelt missives that were far more than a snot-nosed kid clearly getting off on Knowing Roger Ebert deserved. I have no idea why he did it. He told me “that this is important to you as it is, that’s a very large percentage of what you need, really.” He emphasized that such ephemera like “career” and “success” were mostly beside the point. “Just write, get better, keep writing, keep getting better. It’s the only thing you can control.”

Ebert even recommended me for a job stringing movie reviews for the suburbanDaily Southtown newspaper. …

Leitch goes on to write about Ebert taking his time with the young upstart, swinging by his school occasionally, answering emails from time to time, etc. Ebert was a mentor to Leitch, and by all appearances a pretty good one. Then came this:

And I was ready to make my own name. My editor at Ironminds, the old Web magazine I moved out to New York for, had heard me drunkenly bitching about Ebert at a bar the night before and suggested I write about him. “Put him in his place,” he said. “Yeah: It’s our time now,” I said. We were all so, so stupid.

So I did. The next morning, Ironminds ran a piece called “I Am Sick Of Roger Ebert’s Fat F—-ing Face.” The piece — which, mercifully, is no longer online — wasn’t as virulent as that headline would imply, but I did use that exact line in the piece, and I did make a few cheap shots about his weight.

Leitch goes on to say how sorry he is for having written it, etc., and that’s all well and good. I can’t help but respect him less, however, for having written it in the first place. Who does that to their mentor? Who does that to someone who helped them out for no gain? More to the point: Who does that to a friend, even if that friend is only a casual one? There are people who have helped me out at various stages in my career; I might occasionally complain about something they write or believe in private, but I can’t imagine ever taking that complaint public. I certainly can’t imagine writing “I am sick of XYZ’s fat f–ing face.” I don’t want to say there’s a special place in Dante’s Inferno for Leitch — he does seem to be remorseful, after all — but he’d kind of deserve a spot.