"Weblogs Will Save The World"

See this thought-provoking blog with the provocative title, by Eric Janssen at webraw:

.... Blogs have made the creation and publication of content as simple as browsing the Web. Blogging tools have removed virtually all the technical barriers that previously prohibited publication by the masses. Now, everyone with something to say or share can do so without needing to learn new skills....

He may overstate the case there, but the whole thing is a very worthy read.

(Thanks to Howard, who also has an interesting blog sparked by the Jayson Blair Brouhaha.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 05/14/03 10:35:03 PM
Categorized as Media.

Happy First Blogiversary to Ad Orientem

Congratulations to Mark C. N. Sullivan.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 05/14/03 10:21:34 PM
Categorized as Other.

"A Hate Much Loved and Lied About"

Michael Pakenham (not a Catholic) reviews the new book by Philip Jenkins (a former Catholic), The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice:

Is a need to hate essential to the human condition? No. But history and contemporary life insist that hating has beguiling charms. Denying them is a main job of civilization. That job's not being done very well these days.

For the moment, put aside African-Americans, Jews, Latinos and other traditional hate targets and consider the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.

The most elegant description of anti-Catholicism I have read is John Highham's: "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history." That surgically precise diagnosis is quoted in The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice by Philip Jenkins (Oxford, 288 pages, $26)....

Jenkins has taken on a topic that I thought on first blush would be annoying to the point of embarrassment, to either side, and hardly the stuff of a long and detailed book. To the contrary, he accomplishes a fascinating tale, exploring the depths of the consciousness of this country - diverse forces that weave together the history of the civilization that we share....

Jenkins gives particular attention to a 1979 play and later television show by Christopher Durang, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All, which received an Obie and has often been revived on stage. Its ridiculing of the Church and its values, he argues, might be legally prosecuted as a hate crime if the target were anything but the Catholic Church. And that leads him to the core essence of the entire book: "The case of Sister Mary provokes a simple question: why can Catholicism legitimately be attacked in such outrageous terms by the American media, while other racial, social and religious traditions remain exempt?"...

(Thanks, Carl.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 05/14/03 10:44:26 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

"In Blogs We Trust"

An interesting blog by Donald Luskin, Monday, about the emerging role of the Blogosphere:

.... Of course anything that's wrong with the mainstream media -- bias, error, sensationalism, and so on -- can be wrong with the blogosphere as well. But there are six critical differences, all in favor of the blogosphere.

1. When you surfing the blogosphere you are never deluded by the false sense of security conferred by an undeservedly authoritative brand-image like that of the New York Times -- you are in the wild west, and you know it.
2. In the blogosphere you are massively diversified -- you can easily and rapidly access many competing sources of information and points of view. Blogs tend to cite their sources diligently, and provide hyperlinks directly to source material -- if you want to do your own fact-checking, establish context, or just learn more, you can easily do so.
3. Blogs can act as a digest of and gateway to the conventional media -- so you have the best of both worlds.
4. Blogs tend to be written by people who read blogs, and blogs often refer to each other, link to each other, police each other, and so on, so errors or biases are quickly discovered and exposed -- in the heyday of the Internet this used be called "collaborative filtering."
5. Because blogging permits anyone to be his own author/reporter/pundit/publisher is he wishes, you can personally participate in the process of the formation of news and opinion in the blogosphere -- it's not just passively acquiring information, it's being an insider to an information-processing community. B

So if you're a blogger, or even if you just get some of your news and opinions from blogs -- take a moment to be proud of what you are part of. It really is a force for good. It really is revolutionary. And it really is just beginning.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 05/14/03 09:43:35 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

Laugh Out Loud

Go and check out what The Mighty One came up with when he imagined the AWOL Texas Democrats working at McDonald's. (If archive isn't working, see The Mighty Barrister, "Welcome To McDonald's, May I Take Your Order?", earliest entry on Wednesday, May 14, 2003.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 05/14/03 08:10:45 AM
Categorized as Political.

"Diversity's Stigma"

An intelligent column by Jason Riley in today's OpinionJournal, on the Jayson Blair Brouhaha and institutionalized racism affirmative action:

.... Somewhere in between the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1978 Supreme Court Bakke decision on university admissions, blacks forfeited the right to be judged by society as individuals. The most unfortunate consequence of racial preferences is not that they produce the occasional Jayson Blair. (Indeed, the existence of a Stephen Glass would seem to make that link tentative at best.) Far more troubling is that racial preferences, however well-intentioned, strip blacks of their individuality, their pride, their humanity.

Race-based policies make black achievement a white allowance and black failure a group stigma. Which is why so many black journalists hung their heads at the revelation of Mr. Blair's race. If the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule shortly on racial preferences at the University of Michigan, needs another reason to right a wrong it sanctioned 25 years ago, this is it....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 05/14/03 07:58:09 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

Neil Cavuto Smacks Paul Krugman Upside the Head

Paul Krugman wrote something or other in yesterday's NYT. He mentioned FNC's Neil Cavuto:

.... Meanwhile, both the formal rules and the codes of ethics that formerly prevented blatant partisanship are gone or ignored. Neil Cavuto of Fox News is an anchor, not a commentator. Yet after Baghdad's fall he told "those who opposed the liberation of Iraq" — a large minority — that "you were sickening then; you are sickening now." Fair and balanced....

Wasting no time, Cavuto brought out the big guns and fired back the same day:

.... First off, Mr. Krugman, let me correct you: I'm a host and a commentator, just like you no doubt call yourself a journalist and a columnist. So my sharing my opinions is a bad thing, but you spouting off yours is not?

Exactly who's the hypocrite, Mr. Krugman? Me, for expressing my views in a designated segment at the end of the show? Or you, for not so cleverly masking your own biases against the war in a cheaply written column?

You're as phony as you are unprofessional. And you have the nerve to criticize me, or Fox News, and by extension, News Corporation?...

See Luskin vs. Krugman to get an idea of how Krugman is really a lying, partisan Democratic hack.

(Thanks, Matthew.)

P.S. Donald Luskin has a blockbuster blog on Cavuto vs. Krugman.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 05/14/03 07:32:36 AM
Categorized as Media.