Bloggers....

The denizens of the far right, especially their highly paid, so-called pundits, castigate bloggers - especially those from the left wing - for all sorts of shortcomings in our society. They criticize the earthiness and immediacy of almost speed-of-light commentary for what they see as more deep-seated faults in leftist thinking and modalities. And they have no end of help from so-called centrist pundits and high-profile journalists.

The most lame recent example was NBC White House correspondent David Gregory's comment the other day. Gregory was answering a question posed by Helen Thomas. Thomas had asked why there is so much polarization in politics today.

Gregory answered "I think it’s because of the internet largely. The polarized atmosphere in the internet and blogs and whatnot have been a major contributor to that."

Any time communication takes a big leap, few know where we will land. When electrical telegraphy came about in the late 1830s, it took a while for people to realize its communication potential. Early on, people conducting financial transactions and so on developed codes to cloak sensitive information from interceptors. But from the beginning, everyone realized advantages of conveying information over long distances at the speed of light. The development of codes to convey or hide information were early developments, but the understanding of other intrinsic differences between telegraphic communication and hand-written mail or dispatches were lost on many.

The finest early example of a person who grasped the uniqueness of this new communication was General Ulysses Grant, during our Civil War. He realized that accuracy, terseness and simple phrasing were absolutely essential to his telegraphic orders and dispatches. As he realized this, his writing style changed. And it stayed that way.

Late in Grant's life, when he wrote his memoirs, this style was retained. That book influenced writers up through the middle of the 20th Century. The style of Ernest Hemmingway owes much to Grant. I regard his memoirs as one of the five greatest books by an American.

Although Grant's book was a bestseller when it came out, it took a long time for people to realize the importance of its literary style to the American and English languages. The same is true with the languages of bloggers.

I've been corresponding on the internet since 1984. That was about six years before graphic interfaces brought on the world wide web. My styles haven't changed so much as they've been augmented. I understand many shortcuts - texting and acronyms and so on. But I prefer developed thoughts in standard paragraphs. I cuss and get profane sometimes, use CAPITALS TO SHOUT, make bold statements, and use other tools.

Much has changed in the 125 years since Ulysses Grant wrote his Memoirs, but his formula of accuracy, terseness and simple phrasing has lost none of its directness and utility. But back to David Gregory's faulty analysis about blogs.

A blogger named Richard Power, with a site called Words of Power responded to Gregory's slam with this:

Yes, of course, it was the bloggers who polarized the US body politic.

The bloggers spent $50 million plus on Ken Starr's rogue investigation, which was coordinated with the work of the privately funded, reich-wing "Arkansas Project."

The bloggers shackled Susan McDougal and sent her to jail. The bloggers impeached a popular President at a time of peace and economic prosperity over testimony in a civil suit involving sexual intercourse.

The bloggers issued that voluminous report on Bill Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, and posted it on the WWW.

The bloggers ignored accurate US intelligence on Al Qaeda pre-9/11, leading to the slaughter of thousands of innocents at the WTC, and the bloggers distorted accurate US intelligence on Iraq post-9/11, leading to the deaths of thousands of US military personnel, and the maiming of tens of thousands more.

The bloggers swift-boated John Kerry in 2004, morphed Max Cleland's face into Osama bin Laden's in 2002 TV ads, and smeared John McCain in South Carolina in 2000.

The bloggers gutted the surplus, and took the leash of the federal deficit.

In 2000, the bloggers stopped the counting of the ballots ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, and installed the man who lost, as the counting, finished later by researchers, would confirm.

In 2004, the bloggers made sure there weren't enough voting machines in the poorest and blackest districts of Ohio.

The bloggers caged voters. The bloggers purged voters from the rolls. The bloggers intimidated voters.

The bloggers jammed the phones of the Democratic Party on election day 2002 in New Hampshire.

Yes, it was the bloggers who wasted seven years the planet could not afford to waste clinging to denial and disinformation about the nature, causes and implications of global warming.

The bloggers prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman on false charges. T

he bloggers fired eight US Attorneys for pursuing Bush-Cheney associates and not pursuing Bush-Cheney adversaries.

The bloggers made Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights optional.

The bloggers established a Gulag system, instituted torture and rendition, and started disappearing people.

The bloggers stayed on vacation while New Orleans drowned. The bloggers blocked federal funding for stem cell research.

The bloggers tried to make certain that the brain-dead Terri Schiavo would be kept on a feeding tube indefinitely.

The bloggers betrayed US secret agent Valerie Plame, and then made certain that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby -- the man who was convicted of obstructing Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation -- would not spend a single day in prison.

Yes, of course, the bloggers have polarized us all.

The sad fact is that if the David Gregorys of the US mainstream news media had fulfilled their special responsibilities as the "fourth estate," which are articulated in both the US Constitution and the writings of the Founders, most us who have served as citizen journalists and commentators would never have gone into blogging.

Blogging is really simply the pamphleteering of our age. If Tom Paine were alive today, he would, of course, be a blogger. But this time there is no need for a revolution, only for the restoration of the democratic institutions that were won in the revolution, including a press free of both governments and corporations.

In the 1960s and 1970s, we only need[ed] one I.F. Stone; because, in large part, the US mainstream news media still did its job, at least on some stories concerning egregious wrongs, e.g., Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. But now, after decades of media consolidation, we need an Internet-based Information Rebellion, and that is what we have delivered.

What David Gregory is really saying is that he and those who write his checks are scared of the future. And they should be. They are on the wrong side of the digital barricades, and the wrong side of US history.