Why I hate blogs

I can not tell you how pleased I am to have gained enough tenure at www.banjocollege.com (that’s www.banjocollege.com) to be allowed to post to the web log (or “blog”, as the kids call it these days). But with great power comes great responsibility. And since this is no great power, I can just spew vomit and get away with it. So let me start there…


I’m beginning to hate “blogs”. It seems that the media can't but keep crapping out stories about how blogs are threatening to replace them. This, for some reason, is suddenly breaking news. Reporters want to appear knowledgeable enough on the subject to either explain why the phenomenon isn't really significant or to set themselves up as having enough (what is the "blog" equivalent of "street cred"?) in order to jump ship should they actually be right for a change. If I were they, I’d stick with the former because the pay scale on the latter probably isn’t what they’d be hoping for.

Idiots posting rants on the Internet is older than the Internet. Yes, this is possible. Hell I remember posting messages on DARPANET back in the Reagan administration. Sometimes I got helpful responses to my questions on how to write device drivers for the Mac. But even these would eventually evolve into idiotic, school-yard name calling for no apparent reason other than nobody was stopping it.

I learned long ago how to filter out the crap. I learned early on that apart from e-mail and efficient ways to access porn, the whole information technology revolution was crap. And when these two partners got married, and gave birth to SPAM, I was convinced that the fruits of the whole information revolution were things to be dealt with rather than used.

But back in the Clinton administration, some idiot who was apparently smart enough to have a friend smart enough to create a web site where he could post his ravings in a more pimped-up format, comes along with the earth-shattering news that the President enjoys blow-jobs. The next thing you know we are impeaching the sonnofa bitch. The President that is, not the idiot with the web site. If this were the Nixon administration, the idiot would have been killed. The idiot with the web site that is, not the President.

So the “bloggers” were emboldened. Rather than serving as a forum in which bastards too lazy to actually write to their friends can unload their thoughts for the day, they have become more and more a forum for bitching and moaning. Seriously, I think many (not most) bloggers feel that they finally have a means to have their petty grievances aired and appreciated. Hell, I bet they secretly fantasize about someone from CNN reading their rant on how fucked up their company’s IT policies are that it will make Headline News.

And then, a year or so ago, some racist senator made a few racist comments about some other racist senator at a racists' function along the lines of what this country really needed was more racism. Nobody invited any of the established news media to the function so the speakers thought they could get away with the moral equivalent of telling a few "Nigger Jokes" among friends. But someone in that audience figured he/she (okay - HE) finally had something more interesting to post on the Internet (or "Internets" - as George W. is fond of calling it). Something beyond the typical "The USA Sucks! - NO! The UK Sucks! - NO! Canada REALLY Sucks!..." tirade, or the eternal debate over who the best "Star Trek" Captain was.

This posting makes it to the mainstream media and you just know that does nothing but further embolden the whiny-ass crybabies. All of the nice blogs from people remarking about how they spent a wonderful Valentine’s day having a fine meal with their loved one ain’t going to make the news. But some snipe in the back of the room hearing a CNN executive spout about how the US military in Iraq is targeting reporters for assassination IS going to make the news. Even on CNN.

So everybody it seems now is out looking for dirt and spewing filth. The number of folks eavesdropping at "Beula's Beauty Shoppe" went off the chart! Everyone is listening to everyone and reporting on all the dirt that isn’t fit to print.

This can only be a good thing, you'd think. And I do too. I don't like it when a senator can get off telling the moral equivalent of nigger jokes and then campaign for the black vote when I never tell these kinds of jokes. (I still pick on safe groups like people who eat at Subway, and banjo players.) But I'm not running for anything, except maybe out of ideas.

A part of me worries that all of the bloggers and message-boarders over the past 25 years will somehow feel vindicated. As if their "discussions" over who sucks more ("The US or the UK or Canada...") now may actually carry some clout. These idiots are now "cool". They have been represented. Can you imagine that they imagine that we are to soon hear teaser lines for the evening news announce that "It is in fact France that sucks, and in a related story Jean-Luc Piccard has been declared the most flaming Star Trek captain. “

Can we bloggers please stick to the issues that belong in this forum? Tell me more about that romantic dinner you had with your loved one on Valentine’s day. And don’t spare any details about what happened afterwards.

Not that I intend to adhere to any of my advice. I’ve had too much experience with this idiocy not to use it properly. Besides, I’m hoping that Andy Rooney at “60 Minutes” is still smart enough to have a friend smart enough to come across this tirade and turn it into a nationally publicized commentary. The college could use that kind of exposure. And now that I have that kind of power, I must accept that kind of responsibility.

- 1/2