QUIS CUSTOIDET CUSTODES CUSTODUM?
Hesitant as I am to tax the reader's patience with matters better and more extensively covered by bigger and more extensive blogs--Instapundit and Michele Malkin come to mind here--I couldn't let Financial Times columnist Jurek Martin's two cents on blogs go by without a ha' penny of my own. In this weekend's "Letter to America"--entitled "Attack of the killer blogs"--Martin laments the presence of
bodies all over the place, lynched by the operators of web logs, unfiltered and unaccountable competition to what they call the MSM (mainstream media.)
These "bodies" are, of course, Dan Rather and Eason Jordan.
Back in his younger days, Martin continues, he served as a newspaper "gatekeeper," employing
mental and institutional filters to help decide what was fit to print in a newspaper that took its responsibilities seriously.
The FT's columnist--who seems about as clued into the blogging revolution as former CBS exec Jonathan "Pajamas" Klein--goes on to opine
The web did not invent incivility...but the lack of accountability for what appears online allows anybody to be as vicious, rude and unscrupulous as they like.
Let's overlook the fact that, as any blogger knows, what one posts online is subject to the checks and balances of hundreds--and for some, thousands--of readers and fellow bloggers; credibility is vital to attracting and keeping an audience. Let's overlook, as well, the use of the word "lynching"--which implies that Messrs. Rather and Jordan were innocent victims of the venom of predatory web crawlers. No, rather, let us turn two pages away from Martin's column in "Weekend" section to find a photograph of a street demonstration in some European city where smug protesters are hoisting an effigy of the President which depicts half his face looking like a grinning skull. Pretty tame stuff--but civil? Hardly. Incivility--and stupidity--are not limited to the web.
Besides, there is an online filter, or gatekeeper--you. More specifically, your mouse. Should you find a logger's diatribe offensive, you can simply click away to something more thoughtful and intelligent. Would that we could similarly back-arrow away from some of our fellow citizens--for example, the anti-Bush herd that crowded our coastal cities during the election, enlivening dinner parties, art openings and social gatherings of every stripe by observing the similarities between Bush and Hitler, and the Republicans and Nazis, or noting the striking likenesses between American troops in Iraq and the terrorists. You can avoid Ann Coulter's website and turn the radio dial from Michael Savage to Air America. But try telling a glassy-eyed anti-war activist that, in your opinion, the liberation of Iraq was more than American hegemonic control over Middle Eastern oil and brother, you'll discover might quick the definition of intolerance and incivility.
And let us not forget it was the Hollywood branch of the MSM that brought us Fahrenheit 9-11, a movie of breathtakingly reactionary, Leni-Riefenstahl-like mendacity, exploitation and propaganda. It was Hollywood, as well, that Whoopi-ized political discourse to a level that would make a teenager blush--or would have, had not the MSM introduced teenagers to that paragon of civility, taste and accountability known as Rap. Where are the gatekeepers there? And while we're at it, where are the "gatekeepers" in academia--the people whom society trusts to preserve our universities from frauds like Ward Churchill? Who, we should note, was exposed by bloggers.
One could go on. Instead, I'll simply say that I've found the degree of intelligence, civility, responsibility and craft exhibited by the better blogs on the internet frequently outshines that of my own small bailiwick, the New York art world. You can always shut your computer off, pour a glass of wine and expunge the latest post from Daily Kos or Juan Cole. Too bad we can't do the same click 'n purge for Christo and Jean-Claude's current colonization of Central Park.