Remember that illo I did recently for the National Post, the one about yet another bash on blogs? Well, I got so darn fed up with this hate-fest on blogs by the print world that I asked one of the the editors I work with at the National Post if I could write my take on blogs – something a bit more positive, a different perspective than what I have been reading over and over again in various newspapers.
Well, sadly I guess it didn't cut the mustard. And this after a second edit, too! Darn. I even drew a pic to go with my story. Sniff. In fact, I had actually written up a positive piece about blogging a few months ago, with a similar illo, and sent it off to the Facts&Arguments section on the Globe and Mail. No response. Hmmph. I guess a career in print journalism is not in my future!
But the beauty of blogs is that I can post any damn thing I want, including rejected writing! So for those interested, I will post the entire article written by Adam Radwanski, and then my piece, which hopefully counters his arguments to some degree (obviously not enough, 'cuz the editor nixed the damn thing). I was only allowed 700 words, and I guess I just had so much I wanted to say, and couldn't quite say it succintly enough. I welcome any and all critiques. If I want to do more writing, I have to face the critics!
Divided We Blog
by Adam Radwanski
Last week, a contributor to a popular Canadian weblog posted a blistering attack on Islam. Under the heading "Islam Must Be Stopped," someone called "Right Girl" weighed in on "the devil that they call Allah," labelled Islam "a death cult" and called for the entire religion to be banned in Canada.
If Right Girl had stood on a street corner calling for Islam to be banned, passers-by would either have shouted her down or dismissed her as a kook. Any newspaper that published her views would have been deluged with disgusted letters to the editor. But in this forum, the comments that followed her post lauded her for taking such a brave stand – and, in some cases, went even further in their attacks on Muslims.
The blog in question was The Shotgun, found on the Western Standard's Web site. But the issue wasn't the conservative magazine, which of course can't be held responsible for the messages that wing nuts post on its blog. The issue was the broader blog medium that's having a nasty effect on public discourse.
The blogosphere is good for music and trading notes on pop culture. It can be great for sports commentary. It's a way to pass time for those interested in reading the mundane details of strangers' personal lives.
But what it is absolutely lousy for is political debate – mostly because what it encourages is not debate at all, so much as support groups in which the converted preach to one another about the evils of some dark and mysterious enemy. Those frequenting blogs don't learn much and their views are rarely challenged. What they get out of the experience is having their own views reinforced over and over again, until even relative moderates are converted into hard-liners.
This doesn't normally involve the sort of bigotry exhibited by Right Girl. But the more common phenomenon – the polarization into left and right-wing camps, each taking endless cheap shots at each other – is nearly as offputting. And for evidence of its impact, we need only look at political discourse south of the border.
The Internet has not done it alone; talk radio and Fox News have played their role. But what the blogosphere has going for it, more even than those outlets, is the ability to bring together people of one specific viewpoint from all over a given country.
For simple reasons of geography, other outlets cannot do that. A newspaper can be liberal or conservative in its editorial stance, but there simply aren't enough ideologues in any given city for it to be sustainable as a one-sided pamphlet. And with the broad base of viewers needed to draw in advertisers, the same usually goes for TV networks.
A Web site, however, is a different matter entirely. With little or no overhead and no geographic restrictions, it can be successful just by cobbling together a few thousand fans somewhere within a country's borders.
Go to right-wing political blogs, forums and online magazines, from the big names – National Review Online, Instapundit, Little Green Footballs – to an army of smaller ones, and you'll read only of the joyous success of U.S. foreign policy and the evils of Democrats, the "mainstream media," Hollywood and all things "liberal." Go to their equivalents on the other side of the spectrum, notably the enormously popular Daily Kos, and you'll find left-wing types working themselves into a lather over the evils of the Bush administration, the right-wing media and all things conservative.
Both sides would have you believe they're engaged in a righteous war with one another for the sould of American. But because they never actually engage each other, it's not a war at all – it's just two sides endlessly rallying the troops.
This would be a relatively minor concern if such fulminating was limited to the Internet. But conditioned by their online reading, as well as listening to Fox and talk radio, consumers are demanding the same stuff elsewhere.
The rise of Ann Coulter on the right or an Al Franken on the left – commentators who spend most of their time attacking cartoon versions of liberals and conservatives, respectively – suggests where this culture is taking us.
And it's not just the big names: Go to the American politics section of your local bookstore, and you'll find that half the titles are simple-minded polemics against either the left or the right, many of them written by people who made their reputations online.
In Canada, we're moving slower. But there's little doubt we're headed in the same direction.
Here, the right is a little more organized than the left – the "Blogging Tories" group creating a community of hundreds of like-minded blogs with similar obsessions (the liberal media, pacifists, etc) to the ones found south of the border. But it's the Canadian left that has actually shown the biggest crossover into mainstream media, – a media columnist and blogger for the Toronto Star whose main job appears to be attacking conservative commentators on both sides of the border.
True, we don't yet have entire TV programs devoted to advancing an ideology. But with commentators increasingly emulating the zealous partisanship of the online crowd in the hope of eliciting similarily strong reactions, it might not be long. It's a trend that should remind us to hold ourselves to a higher standard, to seek out dissenting views and think critically about the perspectives being sold to us – because the last thing we need is a nation of Right Girls and their sychophants.
Why We Blog
by Patricia Storms
Who knew blogs had so much power?
Even though Adam Radwanski, in his article Divided We Blog (July 31) thinks very little of political blogs and their ability to foster balanced debate, he certainly gives a surprising amount of credence to blogs and their ability to sway public opinion, and even manipulate television and radio. According to Radwanksi, it’s the views found in political blogs which are creating those “cartoon versions of liberals and conservatives” in the media. Political bloggers are “conditioned by their online reading” and as a result “are demanding the same stuff elsewhere” consequently “commentators [are] increasingly emulating the zealous partisanship of the online crowd”.
One has to wonder when Mr. Radwanski first started watching television. Fox News and Bill O’Reilly have been crushing liberal opinion long before political blogs ever became a popular trend. I think the four-letter word beginning with ‘B’ which divided the left and right so dramatically is Bush, not blog.
Blogs do have power, but it’s real power lies in how the message is dispatched, not necessarily what its message contains. Blogs did not create the political polarization existing in North American today; however, they do serve as a barometer for what the average individual is thinking and feeling, in the here and now, be it good, bad or downright stupid. We may not like everything we read on political blogs, or blogs in general, but it’s still worthwhile to know what others are thinking. And all it takes is a click of a mouse to find out.
With a newspaper, however, we know what a few people are thinking, and somehow these few people are supposed to represent the general consensus of everyone across the country. Not helping the situation is the fact that over the years independent newspapers have continually decreased in numbers, and those left standing are being bought out by large multi-national conglomerates. As the number of independent papers decrease, editorial opinion becomes less diversified, so that very often a city will have one right-wing, and one left-wing publication. Sound familiar?
Added to this lack of unique opinion is a newspaper’s inability to elicit instant feedback from a multitude of readers. You can read an editorial, and after waiting 24 hours, you may be lucky enough to find one or two letters to the editor, based on that article. Letters that have been chosen by an editor based on his own biases, who also has to appease the corporate executives who own the publication and who sign his paycheque. It would be wonderful to believe, as Mr. Radwanski does, that “a newspaper can be liberal or conservative in its editorial stance, but there simply aren’t enough ideologues in any given city for it to be sustainable as a one-side pamphlet”, but in this ever-changing climate of corporate control over the media, that viewpoint seems terribly naive.
At the very beginning of Eugene Jarecki’s documentary Why We Fight, the viewer is introduced to old film footage of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address to the Nation given January 17, 1961. In his address, Eisenhower cautions the people of the United States about the insidious power and influence of the military-industrial complex, referring to the collusion amongst the military, defense contractors, and Congress in order to promote the military industry.
Were Eisenhower around today, I wonder if perhaps he might have coined the phrase media-industrial complex, in response to the domination of the media by only a handful of multi-national conglomerates. Be it television, print, or radio, I think it’s safe to say that somebody else is determining the content of what we see, read, or hear. The rise of the political blog is a visceral reaction to this media behemoth that does not care about individual thought and opinion. If you have access to the Internet, you can start a blog, and immediately reach out to others. You don’t have to be powerful, or rich, or know the right people. You can’t be refused a blog based on your looks, weight, race or religion. As a blogger, you are free to express whatever is on your mind, unfettered by the pressures of large corporations or editors with biases. The blogger is beholden to no one. Blogs are the ultimate equalizer – the proletariat’s online playground. So in that respect, though bloggers may be divided in their political views, they are all united in the desire and need to speak freely, and be heard.
