Man! I read what had to be the stupidest editorial I’ve read in some time yesterday.
It appeared in USA Today, and the headline I saw it under (though not the actual headline when I clicked on it) was "The Seductive Mythology of the Blogosphere."
"Okay," I thought. "Perhaps it’ll be a critique of the blogosphere that has something valuable to say."
NOT!
The author–someone named Bruce Kluger–seems to be one of the most insular, perspectiveless individuals I have seen commenting on the blogosphere, and he writes a triumphalistic piece about how the blogospher ain’t all it’s cracked up to be because (are you aready?) "the bloggers" got Joe Liberman denied the Democratic nomination yet "the bloggers" aren’t likely to be able to keep him from retaining his seat in the Senate, thus proving "the bloggers" relative impotence when it counts.
Oh yeah, and the blogosphere also ain’t all it’s cracked up to be because the movie Snakes on a Plane didn’t perform better than most horror movies, despite "the bloggers" best efforts to promote it.
Excuse me, but where has this guy been?
He must be reading a rather polarized selection of blogs if he can speak of "the bloggers" as if they were monolithic supporters of the effort to deny Liberman the Democratic nomination. He’s acting as if the Kos Kidz and their ideological ilk are the whole of the blogosphere, but there were countless conservative bloggers out there arguing that it was a boneheaded move it was for the nutroots to go after Liberman when he was virtually sure to retain his seat. It would only make the Democratic Party look more extreme to the public and potentially alienate Liberman at a moment when the Party needed him particularly badly.
Whatever else may be said about this matter, the blogosphere was not trying to oust Liberman. One segment of politically liberal bloggers was trying to do so, but Mr. Kluger is apparently so myopic that he confuses a single copse of trees for the whole Amazon rainforrest.
Same thing goes–and probably moreso–for his ridiculous argument that the blogosphere couldn’t boost Snakes on a Plane into blockbuster status. There was no monolithic blogosphere effort made here, either.
Now, it’s quite true that the blogosphere has limited power (albeit the power to topple a Dan Rather or to smoke out a "Secret Senator" trying to kill legislation that would allow greater public scruitiny of government waste). The fact is that most people aren’t bloggers and that most people don’t (yet) read blogs on a regular basis. Those points are quite fair.
But to speak as if the blogosphere was a monolithic entity that acts concertedly–as opposed to simply a community of people with widely divergent ideas, interests, and ideologies–is simply reflective of the most blinkered, uninformed journalistic stereotyping imaginable.
I know the press loves simple stereotypes that it can pour people into, but this is simply unconscionably bad journalism.
The irony is that Mr. Kluger himself is a blogger–at least some of the time–at the HuffingtonPost.
If this is the kind of ideologically bubble-bound, "my circle of friends represents the whole universe" low-wattage analysis that goes on at HuffPo then . . . maybe that’s why I don’t read HuffPo.
And maybe it should have rammifications for my willingness to click on USA Today editorials as well.