THE B-WORD (AGAIN)

Janet Street-Porter thinks blogs are "the verbal diarrhoea of the under-educated and the banal." (I thought she built a career making programmes for just that kind of demographic.) The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier says that bloggers "are not in the complexity business". And my friend Yasmin Alibhai-Brown asks:

Where do blog writers and surfers find the time? When do they do the washing, cooking, eating, talking, cuddling, story-reading to kids? Do they never help with school homework, go to the theatre, make love, read books, talk to friends, entertain? 

And please don't tell me this is democratising communication. Mass blogging may indeed be giving access to Everyman, but is he always worth listening to? ...The most successful bloggers are ex-politicians or very well known public figures afflicted by insufferable vanity.

Now, why is it that bloggers are driven by vanity, but columnists aren't? And where do columnists find the time to make love, knit cardigans, read other columnists, etc, etc?  Mystifying, isn't it?

Comments

[Jorg]

All this reminds me of a famous saying. I am just an "under-educated" blogger, so I don't remember exactly how it goes. It's something like: Every idea goes through three phases: First it is ignored, then it is ridiculed and finally taken for granted. I think the blogosphere is somewhere between the second and third phase.
Interrupting my "verbal diarrhoea" for second: I think I am referring to Schopenhauer's description of truth. Anyway, who needs Schopenhauer, I think what I write makes sense anyway. We bloggers are famous for making up our own truthiness.

"And please don't tell me this is democratising communication. Mass blogging may indeed be giving access to Everyman, but is he always worth listening to?"

That's democracy. Politicians, Union leaders, NGO activists and everybody else who is considered a vocal member of our democracy are not always worth listening to either. Indeed it is part of democracy to decide for oneself to whom I listen to

"The most successful bloggers are ex-politicians or very well known public figures"

WTF is she talking about? The most successful bloggers according to Technorati or any other measure I know of are neither expolitician nor any other well public figure.