Why I blog
I agree with Brayden:
Anyhow, I first became interested in doing this because I hated Molly Ivins' style (for that matter, I hate most editorial page columnists now) precisely because she substituted a few drive-by, snarky comments for any serious, in-depth treatment of serious ideas. So I thought I would vivisect each of her columns and simultaneously demonstrate the opposite style.
Unfortunately, the first article I took on is still only half-finished. It involved her saying that phone deregulation didn't work because we are now getting telemarketer calls during dinner, among other monuments of cleverness-masquerading-as-analysis. At one time, I actually enjoyed her until I noted that one week, she was crying that Newt cut off funding to the sweet little old nuns at Catholic Charities, and the next, in an article on the favorite reading materials of favorite groups, she was telling us that the Bible is for psychotic cult leaders like David Koresh (yeah, try radiocarbon dating those references). All without apparently any sense of irony. It was just bare rhetorical point-scoring.
So, yeah, I appreciate the occasional bit of brevity, but I also believe that far too many subjects in our culture that are worthy of serious consideration have been - no, distilled is not the right word - boiled down to thin, soundbitey gruel.
Heaven help us if the natural evolution of blogging is to turn all of us into walking Powerpoint presentations. I’m glad I don’t feel cursed in this way.Even one of the commenters on Seth's post says, "My tolerance for reading something that doesn’t make its point in the first two sentences is now zero." I suspect that has something more to do with texting than blogging, and may be indicative of the PowerPointization of thinking. Edward Tufte must be a hollow figure of abject despair at this point.
Anyhow, I first became interested in doing this because I hated Molly Ivins' style (for that matter, I hate most editorial page columnists now) precisely because she substituted a few drive-by, snarky comments for any serious, in-depth treatment of serious ideas. So I thought I would vivisect each of her columns and simultaneously demonstrate the opposite style.
Unfortunately, the first article I took on is still only half-finished. It involved her saying that phone deregulation didn't work because we are now getting telemarketer calls during dinner, among other monuments of cleverness-masquerading-as-analysis. At one time, I actually enjoyed her until I noted that one week, she was crying that Newt cut off funding to the sweet little old nuns at Catholic Charities, and the next, in an article on the favorite reading materials of favorite groups, she was telling us that the Bible is for psychotic cult leaders like David Koresh (yeah, try radiocarbon dating those references). All without apparently any sense of irony. It was just bare rhetorical point-scoring.
So, yeah, I appreciate the occasional bit of brevity, but I also believe that far too many subjects in our culture that are worthy of serious consideration have been - no, distilled is not the right word - boiled down to thin, soundbitey gruel.
Labels: culture
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