Stipulation the first: I am not now, nor will I ever be interested in participating in the old v. new media debate, at least as it applies to weblogs, because sooner or later everyone starts discussing Instapundit in respectful tones, and I simply cannot keep a straight face.
Stipulation the second: I am in full agreement that, at least when it comes to columns, many bloggers-who-work-free write rings around columnists-who-earn-a-good-buck-at-it. However, and this is where I part ways with many in the blogging community, I don’t think this is a harbinger of the death of old-media columnists. See the “My kid could paint that” debate for background.
What keeps me coming back to my blog bookmarks day after day are entries like The Poor Man’s year-end awards, where, in search of nothing more than an excuse to put off starting the day for another couple minutes, I might find a line like this:
The greatest seasoning of 2003 was, once again, garlic. Runner-up goes to cilantro. Cilantro’s like the Larry Bird of seasoning – it’s not just that it tastes great in its own right, but it makes the food around it give 110% as well.
alex said on January 2, 2004 at 4:16 pm
If Larry Bird’s the cilantro of seasonings, then Kobe Bryant is anise�always overpowering on a small tart.
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wade said on January 3, 2004 at 7:44 am
I don’t know you, Alex, but you’re my new hero… I’ll be recycling your Kobe line at the very next opportunity…
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tso said on January 3, 2004 at 10:32 pm
Blogs have the “anti-virtue” of not having to be dependable. John Updike wrote:
“There should always be something gratuitous about art, just as there seems to be, according to the new-wave cosmologists, something gratuitous about the universe. Art, out of its own freedom, should excite and flatter our sense of our own. Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring – an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.”
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Nance said on January 3, 2004 at 11:39 pm
Nice quote, tso. On an only distantly related topic: Maybe someday Lance Mannion will stop by and tell the story of his friend who was mistaken for John Updike in an Indianapolis McDonald’s.
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Beau said on January 6, 2004 at 10:08 am
I am the world’s greatest blogger and the world’s greatest artist. Refute.
Cilantro, however, was clearly robbed and should have had the opportunity to play garlic in the Sugar Bowl.
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