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Blame the bloggers.
By Tom | July 29, 2007
Washington Post Columnist Jim Hoagland has apparently decided that those who write blogs and have the temerity to criticize the mainstream media are somehow in the same league with sports cheats and terrorists who build roadside bombs. About bloggers in particular, he says:
This era’s miniaturization of power in the hands of the individual favors destructive forces rather than creative ones at present. In their very different ways, devastating new military technologies and their wide availability, the Internet, and the greatly increased flow of money, goods, ideas and people across national borders have all wrought changes that defenders of the existing order struggle to comprehend and counter.
The most vindictive bloggers and many others eager to push the mainstream media, established politicians or other remnants of the status quo off a stage that they want to occupy smash reputations with abandon to call attention to themselves. What do they have to lose in the unpoliced badlands of the ether? They contribute to a general deepening of cynicism in the land at no perceived cost to themselves.
But deeply polarized nations that devote an inordinate amount of their time and energy to hunting and prosecuting both real villains and convenient scapegoats — at the expense of failing to recognize and respect heroes and helpers of the common good — do pay an enormous collective price. Such nations descend into easily manipulated despair and resentment that inevitably lead to ever greater destruction. Americans would do well to ponder that in a summer of doubt and division.
I would argue that a dozen years of Republlican control of Congress and the vicious partisanship it imposed, six years of a Republican presidency hell-bent on having its way even in defiance of the law, has done as much to polarize the nation — and bloggers — than any group of citizens has done.
Want to know why bloggers are criticizing manstream media? Read Hoagland.
Topics: Blogging |
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