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Friday, June 06, 2003
Patting himself on his power glutes
All hail the mighty blogosphere, Andy Sullivan says:
It's worth reviewing that the blogosphere was there before the mainstream media caught on and long before the Jayson Blair revelation. First, blogs revealed how many of the NYT's polls were skewed in the way they presented or spun data. They exposed the anti-Bush fervor of the Enron coverage. Then they broadcast the revelation of how Paul Krugman had once had lucrative former ties with Enron. We exposed blatant lies on the front-page - from allegedly soaring temperatures in Alaska to the fabricated cooptation of Henry Kissinger into the anti-war camp in August 2002. The process was relentless. In the end, even fabulist Maureen Dowd couldn't get away with doctoring quotes from the president to make a partisan point because a relatively little known blogger caught her, and passed it on. And in all this, we were helped by hundreds of readers who found errors and bias where others didn't - meta-bloggers, if you will.
Oh, please. Bloggers didn't catch Blair at anything, but it allowed some of them to show off their inner bigot under the guise of "truth in journalism" and beat the drum against the SCLM. And since Krugman himself noted in one of his earlier columns that he had taken consulting money from Enron years ago, do bloggers get credit for merely reading it and then shouting "Eureka!"? That's not much of a talent. Meanwhile bloggers like Instapundit make posts like this and link to cranks like Howard Veit who is a tinfoil hat or two away from being named Alcoa Man of the Year. Witness Instapundit correspondent Howard:
The revolution is against the media bias in the press and it is bearing fruit. Raines and Boyd leaving the NYT is the edge of a black hole in journalism. The Guardian in England is now having to "correct" lie after lie. The only reason for this sudden honesty is the internet and the obsessed maniacs who have decided to fact check everybody. There are now so many of them that soon every newspaper MIGHT have to have a nodding acquaintance with fact and truth. The breadth of the corruption is nationwide. The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle (where the people want their news slanted and hard left), the Minneapolis Daily Worker, Chicago Tribune, and many others are agenda driven and the agenda is Left. We are seeing a call to accounts....
BUT
Things won't change much because the advertisers support what is going on. We have a strange change in our culture. That change is the formation of an elite, college educated and well paid, that has become very left. They make a lot of money because they are professionals. Most work for government and this means they are an entitlement group dependent upon tax money for their life styles. This huge entitlement class includes everyone in education, every government worker (Federal, State, and Local), and many business interests (Defense, all science and research, road building, bridge building and so on. And farmers, don't forget the Ag interests). They need higher taxes to make higher wages; them rockets to the moon ain't happening on free enterprise, baby. This new elite needs laws passed so they can "take care" of others like handicapped, sick, criminals, and so on. There is a "caretaker" elite of social workers, psychologists, health care people, and so on. This huge new elite supports "art": art dealers, symphonies, museums, and such. This "art complex" is tax supported because not even the well paid elites can afford any of it. This means musicians, actors, artists, writers of their stuff, and everybody connected with these tax subsidized artistic endeavors is a part of this "entitlement class".
That class only exists through taxes. Operas, symphonies, ballets display their wares in tax supported theatres and their wages are partly tax dollars; admissions don't cover half the costs. Movies are the only big "art" medium that pays its own way. And even in that business tax shelters and taxes work. Do you think 80% of these fake actors could make the money they make if their wages were actually pegged to their box office? Most would be SAG minimum day players or weekly salaried minimums. Have you ever wondered how in the hell a real business could shell out shareholder money to finance the crap that comes out?
Does Glenn even read the crap he links to? How can someone criticize Howell Raines over Jayson Blair while promoting drivel like that? The blogosphere has miles to go before it becomes a force in anything other than in the minds of those who hobby at it. If bloggers want to be taken seriously, and some do, they need to adhere to the same standards that they demand of the professionals. Coming back to a posting two hours after it has been made to say "Whoops. My bad." puts a blogger on the same level of the internet food chain as say Micky Kaus or Matt Drudge. That is to say: bottom-feeders. In the race to be first with news accuracy shouldn't be trampled. Don't trust...always verify.
A little gazing in the mirror would do a world of good.
And while we are looking in the mirror, shouldn't former editor Andy Sullivan take a look at this construction?:
Then they broadcast the revelation of how Paul Krugman had once had lucrative former ties with Enron.
"once had lucrative former ties"?
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