Now, Righty bloggers are finding themselves in a bit of a pickle. Their audience is shrinking and whatever tissue-thin veneer of credibility they may have gained since 2003 has been squandered like a pallet of shrink-wrapped cash in Iraq as they have gone chasing around and around Big Media's coverage of the Middle East in an increasingly embarrassing quest for signs of "liberal bias".After establishing superiority the writer goes on to bash Michelle Malkin for Jamil Hussein flap and a few hyperdramatized non-issues, mocks her Iraq trip, and wraps up by proclaiming:
It's time for someone to call the bitch out.And this is rational discourse?
I'm treading into hypocrites valley here--I've got my own glass house and have fallen prey to hyperbole and childishness, too. A mild cuss word might slip out at times. But I'm just a speck, these people are the heavyweights. If they allow blogging to be seen as a playground the medium will soon reach a level of diminishing returns. Here's a perfect example:
A few days ago, one of Patterico's regular commenters, Carlitos, informed him that a comment he had posted in a debate on abortion on the Liberal Avenger blog was altered (by someone with admin privileges) to include this lurid passage:Sounds a lot like the message board world. Let's hope that's not the destination of the blogosphere, since many of us started blogs to get away from such nonsense. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about spirited debate or even symbolic yelling, or even the Pandagon flap. I'm talking about dirty tricks, lies, disinformation, inciting violence and slander.
Anecdotally, it seems that more of this stuff emanates from the reality-based side than elsewhere. Whether true or not, the smart folks running those big sites can set the example by refraining and condemning that kind of stuff while advocating winning their arguments above the boards. Otherwise, they run the risk of rendering us all as irrelevant.
__
Inspired in part by this. Also see this, and this.
No comments:
Post a Comment