SELF- DELUSIONAL

Here is some self-delusional, self-righteous, holier-than-thou crap to read should you so choose:

Opinion Journal
INFORMATION AGE

The Blog Mob
"Written by fools to be read by imbeciles."

BY JOSEPH RAGO

In his second paragraph, Mr. Rago writes,

"The ascendancy of Internet technology did bring with it innovations. Information is more conveniently disseminated, and there's more of it, because anybody can chip in. There's more "choice"--and in a sense, more democracy. Folks on the WWW, conservatives especially, boast about how the alternative media corrodes the "MSM," for mainstream media, a term redolent with unfairness and elitism."

Interestingly, when I finished his column, I found that he did nothing in my mind to dispel that notion.

He boasts:

"The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps."

and,

"Every conceivable belief is on the scene, but the collective prose, by and large, is homogeneous: A tone of careless informality prevails; posts oscillate between the uselessly brief and the uselessly logorrheic; complexity and complication are eschewed; the humor is cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence; arguments are solipsistic; writers traffic more in pronouncement than persuasion . . .

and concludes,

"Certainly the MSM, such as it is, collapsed itself. It was once utterly dominant yet made itself vulnerable by playing on its reputed accuracy and disinterest to pursue adversarial agendas. Still, as far from perfect as that system was, it was and is not wholly imperfect. The technology of ink on paper is highly advanced, and has over centuries accumulated a major institutional culture that screens editorially for originality, expertise and seriousness.

Of course, once a technosocial force like the blog is loosed on the world, it does not go away because some find it undesirable. So grieving over the lost establishment is pointless, and kind of sad. But democracy does not work well, so to speak, without checks and balances. And in acceding so easily to the imperatives of the Internet, we've allowed decay to pass for progress."

To be sure, there is a lot of "crap" on the internet. I think everyone is entitled to "discover" this for themselves. But I have to be honest here, I see little virtue in getting your "news" and opinions either totally or in large part from television and the "highly advanced technology of ink and paper."

I suppose I should be grateful that we have those non-elitists like Mr. Rago who can lead the way for us, hold our hands, tell us what we need to know, and to "screen [for us] editorially for originality, expertise and seriousness."