A Golden Age?

I was thinking how much I enjoy reading blogs. They consitute a golden age of writing and argument, instantly available and free. Part of the pleasure is iliterary--the joy of well-turned phrases. In the phrasemaking department, Lileks writes at a consistently high level. Today, he tackles his Strib colleague Nick Coleman on gasoline prices, and puts in Coleman's mouth some comical bits of inarticulate rage. Last year he described the new Walker Art Center as looking like an "angry robot god." I have used Bleats in my classes to illustrate similes and metaphors.

But the pleasure is also that of argumentation. What can match the back-and-forth of the writers on The Corner, for instance, or the logic of a Eugene Volokh? (Law professors in general make good bloggers.) Who combines humor and logic and fact so well as Tom Maguire on Plamegate or the Duke lacrosse miscarriage of justice? Mark Steyn, of course, is sui generis, although I must say I like him and Lileks better in print than on Hugh Hewitt. Writing gives you the chance to edit and polish. The mots tend to be more juste, less adulterated by the exigencies of the moment.

The other great benefit of blogs is that they provide a perspective usually missing from the MSM. Here are two current examples. The New Yorker this week has a Talk of the Town piece on Rachel Carson. It lambastes the Bush administration for gutting environmental regulations, to favor rapacious corporate interests. But the piece avoids all mention of the great debate about "Silent Spring" and DDT, and how the ban on its use has cost a great number of lives in poor countries because of the resurgence of malaria. Blogs have made the argument that Rachel Carson has indirectly been responsible for thousands of preventable deaths.

The other example concerns another Rachel, the U.S. Attorny for Minnesota, Rachel Paulose. The Pioneer Press today breathlessly reported that Monica Goodling admitted to considering party affiliation in the selection of Paulose. The PP is shocked, shocked to discover politics playing a role in political appointments. But as Powerline noted, there may have been a U.S. attorney appointed by a president of the opposite party, but it's not how things are done usually. More proof that the center-right blogosphere serves as a welcome counterpoint to MSM bias.

Posted by Finn MacCool