Thursday, December 21, 2006

George Will in the Age of Man in the Age of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

I'm hardly a triumphalist of The Blog--the format or the form it's inspired. And I don't read Time. And if I'm really the Man of the Year, then I'll join with Jean-Paul to the Nobel committee: Merci, mais non.

Still, when George Will laments again that "Narcissism is news," and tells us hacks that "Franklin's extraordinary persona informed what he wrote but was not the subject of what he wrote," I feel impelled to make an introduction.

George Will, meet Benjamin Franklin.

Posted by IOZ at 11:01 AM | email »

1 comments:

Brother Rail Gun of Forgiveness said...

Up until a few years ago, pundits like Will could shrug off criticism. Their columns drew only a few letters to the editor and of those few only the mildest would get published. Their colleagues could be relied on to pull their punches. They could ignore blogs, too, until triumphalism and boosterism pushed them into something the cool kids were doing. A protective social bubble is gone, now.

I think we can be sure Will has done vanity-googling and come across less than respectful commentary on his punditry. The odds are some of the colleagues who have kept up the facade of comity and solidarity over the years have too. His own market niche, hack punditry, now has thousands -- perhaps hundreds of thousands -- of competitors for him; all vying for attention, most swearing to "take down" that evil old MSM. Few have to worry about maintaining comity. 1,000 monkeys typing are no threat to a major talent. But they are to another monkey.

7:48 PM

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