I don't think Whizbang was saying it immunizes someone, but if writing is my job, I should be expected to write well and clearly.
As someone who's been paid to edit manuscripts prior to publication, this is simply not a reasonable expectation. Writers are human. They make mistakes like everyone else. I literally got paid to fix professional writers' mistakes with words. Writers aren't magic. They're people. They have good days and bad. Get rushed. Need to drop the kids off at the pool mid conversation. Just like everyone else.
It would really benefit people to peek behind the traditional publishing curtain just a bit. The process of writing, editing, and publishing a book isn't some quick magical process. Riggs maybe comes across as smart and well-spoken in his book(s), but that's the result of years of research, writing, rewriting, editing, more rewriting, more research, etc all done by more than just Riggs himself. One traditionally published book is the result of hundreds of hours of work by dozens of people.
To expect every communication a writer makes to have that level of forethought and work put in is rather silly.
To be clear, I'm in no way defending Riggs here. I'm pointing out that writers are humans who are not perfect word machines. Expecting them to be is ridiculous. That's it.
And I should be willing and able to take responsibility for it when I don't.
Communication is not a one-way street. It doesn't matter how I say what I want to communicate to you if you have no interest in listening. It's not all on the writer to convey their meaning. It doesn't matter how clearly they communicate, someone will inevitably not understand. This is also why we have writing specifically for various age and education levels. Some audiences have more or less understanding, more or less vocabulary, etc.
And if I choose to put out clickbait for its marketing value, I should accept the heat it draws as the price of doing business.
Absolutely true. As I said in my post, Riggs' article reads like clickbait. It should be treated as such.