Stifling Anonymous Sociopaths
Mike Reith sent me a link to a nice article in the New York Times about the radical bad manners that prevail in the blogosphere. It's gotten bad enough so that Jimmy Wales and Tim O'Reilly are trying to bring about the return of blogger civility by devising a Blogger's Code that ( Read more... )
It's an interesting question, because it may not be anything new. The 19th century was rather vituperative in its public discourse - at least in the United States; Mark Twain's "Journalism in Tennessee" is an only-slightly-exaggerated account. Back then, when the difference between a pamphlet, a newsheet and an actual newspaper was, shall we say, blurry, people sounded off and fulminated at each other in a snowstorm of paper and ink - and got into fistfights and gunfights over it, if necessary.
I suggest that this is the normal state of affairs in a Republic such as ours. Not until radio stations began - and then television, which wasn't cheap - did monolithic corporations dispensing The News come to stand astride the nation. Even then, local stations had editorials, which were sometimes rebutted, but the tide was ebbing.
Now, though, Poor Richard Saunders lives again on the Internet (Franklin's Almanack was a blog - it's instantly recognizable!) and that rip-roaring public discourse is again filling the air with vitriol and vigorous, key-pounded rebuttal. God Bless the Republic!
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