Son,

This world of blogging is fascinating. Large audiences can be reached with the push of a button. Bloggers rarely report the news – rather we just comment on the news. Sometimes the word ‘comment’ does not quite describe what is really happening. Blogging has become a vent for the anger of a frustrated populace.

My observation of our own writing is that we are not only giving our opinion, we are doing so in a manner that is provocative. We spit clever sarcasm, or we think it is clever. Perhaps we just call it satire. Satire is an accepted form of literary expression – right? I have taken some pretty hard positions and referred to those who do not agree as nut case wackos. Aaah, the world of blogging. Finally we have a world where we can really let it out. We are free at last, free at last, free at last.

Were we so gifted with the verbal skills of Martin Luther King we probably would not have to call people names. We could merely make our logical case and let the logic defend itself. How boring. That would be way too much like real journalism – real journalists have learned to be more passive-aggressive. They rarely demonstrate the outright aggressive banter of the blogger. The professional journalists have learned how to slap someone ‘up side’ the head and then raise their innocent arms in a gesture of dumbfoundment, exclaiming “What? What are you talking about? I’m a professional journalist.

There is something important happening – and it is not about writing or about media. The media (from medium, or message, or messenger) is but an expression of something far more sinister.

I have been traveling the blogosphere for only a couple of months – an enlightening couple of months. Blogging is but a method. The outright anger expressed is something else. The anger is real and it reflects a very unhappy populace. Each blog is but a leaf on a tree in a vast forest. Someone should step back and look at the forest. It might be on fire.

Dad

See Also: On Social Justice