A quite stunningly daft article about blogging

[T_i_B]

Feel free to pick this one apart, written by a British neo-con who doesn't even allow comments on his own blog.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2052776,00.html

Blogs are providers not of news but of comment. This would be a good thing if blogs extended the range of available opinion in the public sphere. But they do not; paradoxically, they narrow it. This happens because blogs typically do not add to the available stock of commentary: they are purely parasitic on the stories and opinions that traditional media provide. If, say, Polly Toynbee or Nick Cohen did not exist, a significant part of the blogosphere (a grimly pretentious neologism) would have no purpose and nothing to react to.

The great innovation of web-based commentary is that readers may select minutely the material they are exposed to. The corollary is that they may filter out views they find uncongenial. This is a problem for a healthy democracy, which depends on a forum for competing views.

In its paucity of coverage and predictability of conclusions, the blogosphere provides a parody of democratic deliberation. But it gets worse. Politics, wrote the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, is a conversation, not an argument. The conversation bloggers have with their readers is more like an echo chamber, in which conclusions are pre-specified and targets selected. The outcome is horrifying. The intention of drawing readers into the conversation by means of a facility for adding comments results in an immense volume of abusive material directed - and recorded for posterity - at public figures.

The blogosphere, in short, is a reliable vehicle for the coagulation of opinion and the poisoning of debate. It is a fact of civic life that is changing how politics is conducted - overwhelmingly for the worse, and with no one accountable for the decline.

[leveymg]

1. Of course, we're all just disagreeable "parasites" who have

nothing to add to the informed opinion of our reliable, trusted betters in the MSM.

We, in the blogosphere, are nothing but diseased livestock, prone to kick and bite our herders.

What a perfectly enlightened view of the world, if it were the 11th Century.

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. No, you moron. The parody of democracy is the triumvirate of

uniformly right-wing, corporatist parties the British public is now obliged to choose from.

And those nice UK politicians had such a lovely civilised club they could make nice to each other in. While their sugar-coated cynicism has ensured that the country has become a spiritual and material waste-land!

[juno jones]

3. Oh yeah

The MSM gives us so many shiny new viewpoints to choose from. Do I want to listen to Ruch, Ann, or Imus today to coagulate my opinions? Public figures abused? Oh heavens. Anarchy will ensue and democracy will be lost! Twit.

[bemildred]

4. Orwell would be impressed.

Sentence by sentence, one incorrect statement after another. Given that his book is titled "Anti-Totalitarianism: the Left-Wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy", this is no surprise.

[T_i_B]

5. The daftest statement of all is this...

The notion that a political party becomes credible by being responsive to its activists is an error that Labour disastrously adopted in the 1980s.

No wonder the Labour party is hemorrhaging members so badly when there are people who claim to be Labour supporters who adopt this attitude. What's the point of joining a political party when they refuse to take any notice of your views?

[bemildred]

6. Yes, that's good, but it's all good.

It's just one paradox after another. Up is down. Left is right. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

I assume he is well paid for writing this tripe.