It's rare that the expulsion of a film critic from their critics' organization gets this much attention, or this much applause. I can't think of a time when a story like this was even news. Owen Gleiberman writes up the wherefores in a nigh-eulogistic tone, but Armond White is a man no one would ever call Caesar, nor this action some sort of sinister plot against him.

The reason that the whole incident, to me, was sad is that Armond White is a critic I have defended, and at times championed, for being an extraordinarily vital voice: not a soft one, to be sure, but a demanding and even important one. As a critic, he is passionate, perverse, furious, infuriating, insightful, obtuse, humane, ruthless, fearless, out of his gourd, and, at his best, outrageously exciting to read. A lot of people despise him, because he can be a bully in print, and he wears the I-stand-alone perversity of his opinions far too proudly, like a military armband. Yet much of the dismissal of Armond is itself way too dismissive. He’s an embattled critic, but one who is often at war with the lockstep tendencies in our culture, and that’s a noble crusade. Sure, there are days when he says that a Transformers movie (or a bad Brian De Palma movie) is superior to anything by Richard Linklater or Steven Soderbergh, and you want to go, “Enough, stop!” But there are other days when he slices through the piety of adoration that surrounds certain movies. He’s a reckless master at unmasking cultural prejudices.

My friend Jeremy Smith rightly pointed out White's opinions on De Palma and Spielberg being amazingly incisive on Twitter, and there's a great deal of his writing that cuts through versions of reality promoted by filmmakers and their "teams" in an effort to make them look more uniquely brilliant.

Of course, he also called White Chicks and Little Man two of the best movies of their respective release years.