Unless the point is that Joseph Rago is thankful that he is an “assistant editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal” by virtue of being editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Review, you know, like the Pharisee, who was thankful he was not like other men, publicans and sinners.
When someone drags Henry James into the argument, then you know that it’s time to check Weather.com for snow warnings.
Rego makes the startling point that political blogs are “predictable,” and therefore “excruciatingly boring.” “[R]ight-leaning blogs exhaustively pursue second-order distractions... Leftward fatuities too are easily found.” No kidding!
Of course blogs are derivative; of course they rely on the mainstream media for their reportage; of course 97.8 percent of blog content is pure dreck. Yet blogs themselves are not the worst of the worst. I would suggest that the comments section of blogs is where you go if you really want to wallow in the gutter.
The great boon of the blogosphere, for conservatives, is that for the first time we have a political community, a place where we can rehearse conservative opinions and find a resonance. It’s something that liberals have had for decades with the MSM, National Public Radio, and the faculty lounge. It’s a link in the food chain between genuinely original thinkers, best-selling popularizers, politicians, and the voters. It gets conservative ideas worked over and given life.
So it’s all boring and predictable. But then so, if you like, is a baseball game, and so is religious ritual. So also is the monthly non-profit board meeting you faithfully attend.
Blogs are like every other technical advance of the modern era. No advance ever solves anything. It just raises the stakes.
Blogs may be boring and predictable. But then so are editorials at the New York Times.
Blogs are now part of the national political conversation.
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