Despite his modest denial, Peter and a fairly rare number of others who blog in addition to teaching, writing, researching go far beyond the vast, over-publicized pundit-class of blog-beings who create a Malthusian mess out of blogland and other media, bringing along hundreds of commentary-posting drones with them whose claim to worth is a dull wit of self-admiration and allegiance to the queen bee's demands.
The same goes for blogland where repetition of the same dead-end ideas make the rounds of dead-end thinkers who happen to have that following. Atrios might say at this point, "time to convene another blogger ethics conference." Funny, and he rightly ridicules those from non-blog media who don't have a clue about blogging's potential. But that's really not the point here. It's that blogland has also become lazy and vulgarly stupid -- especially in much of the commentary to posts. I'm relatively new to blogs -- perhaps I've overestimated them. I wrote a chapter in the book The Internet in Public Life last year that, in part, commended what I then thought was the promising political and dialogical power of blogs. I'm not sure I could say the same today, certainly not about the political blog icons and their disciples who've fixed their place into a kind of self-satisfied intellectual stasis.
Blogland is diverse, yes, but it absolutely needs an injection of the kind of genuinely intellectually-informed modesty and spirit of inquiry Peter brings to his posts. And his modesty about his mediatized "expert" status comes from a man who has absolutely no objective reason to be modest. Genuineness is a great virtue.
The tragedy is that the pontificating bloggers have two basic modes: trying to make it in an inside-the-beltway sort of way -- wherein lies the embarrassing secret definition of "success" -- while posing as outside-the-beltway regular folks and using a group of cultish wannabes to carry on the fight or by allowing the relative anonymity of the internet to allow them to act like squirrels fighting over an exclusive cache of nuts. Blogland is, in this very real sense, like all modern public media. And many of the self-congratulatory people who effused about its potential are also the same who turned it into another part of the cultural wasteland.
'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
Nothing?'
I remember
Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag --
It's so elegant
So intelligent
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'
'I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
4 comments:
Ah, but your blogroll is chockfull of people with, as you state, 'something to say'. Nobody expects all 20 million blogs to be brilliant, and some of the A-listers ran out of steam or just became A-listers because they started earlier than others. Sure, there are many "current events" bloggers who do not bring anything new to the debate, but a few that do are gems. Lance Mannion has a way with words that eludes most others. Legal Fiction is a treasury of deep thought on law and politics. Mike The Mad Biologist combines science and politics in a uniquely smart way. In my view - they are experts, no matter what their formal realm of expertise may be.
I, too, have become disenchanted with the 'blogosphere' since becoming a blogger myself. I've noticed my posts becoming increasingly partisan in a futile attempt to catch the attention of the traffic-whoring mega-blogs. I idealistically believed blogs could provide a forum to transcend partisan bickering, but they seemed to be used to fuel it. The biggest of the big bloggers are typically on the front lines, spewing the talking points of their queen-bee politicians. Many top bloggers frequently conference calling with party leaders.
The problem is, many bloggers link to the big-dogs in an attempt to get readers, and doing so they slowly come to resemble these extremely partisan talking heads (I'm thinking of Kos, Instapundit, Eschaton, Mudville, etc.)
It sucks, but who wants a blog without readers?
coturnix -- I agree with pretty much everything you say, just a bit frustrated with sifting through supposedly terrific hero-worshipping blogs and coming away feeling unclean.
The A-lister point is a good one. Mark Gisleson at Norwegianity told me something similar. I've realized that myself. But that's part of the point -- how blogland has settled into the same habits and routines and hierarchies of the traditional media. It's a tough call -- blogs are proliferating like rabbits, most of the stuff not very good, so the ones that are end up being lost in the noise and readers fall into the routine of simply reading A-listers, which then often drop in quality and worth. Makes one think there's not a lot of difference between blogland and other media.
I'm not seeking out readers myself by saying this. Just an observation about blogland.
Anyway, thanks for the references -- I'll check out these blogs. I appreciate it.
coturnix, again --
Checked out the sites you recommended and especially like Mike the Mad Scientist. I read a few of the posts -- really good. But it was his self-description that sold me. If only we could all admit the narcissism and silliness in blogging, then be smart at the same time when we do post. Nice.
The others... not so thrilled about, but I'll give them another try later.
Thanks again.
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