Kathy Kinsley and InstaPundit praise Norah Vincent and her column about blogging for “getting it right”. Maybe Vincent has actually read a few blogs, but I have to ask: What universe does she live in where the Left’s “bowdlerized opus of ideals” are all you can find in the newspapers? Has she never heard of the Washington Times, the New York Post, the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, or the Wall Street Journal, to name the more obvious counterexamples? Good grief.
Like Nick Denton and his inability to find “liberal” bloggers, Vincent needs to get out more. She seems to think that until blogging came along, poor helpless conservatives had no alternative to the icky left-wing opinions they were forced to read in their daily Tattler Tribunes. Oh, if only there were some conservative voices in the media – maybe a magazine, or a TV personality, or a radio talk show, anything. Thank God the Internet has freed us from our chains and given a place for our long-silenced voices to be heard!
Full credit goes to Virginia Postrel for seeing through Vincent’s phoniness. Among other things, she points out that Alex Beam, the much-maligned Boston Globe writer whom Vincent piles on for his silly anti-blogging piece, has actually also written in praise of blogs. (It’s interesting, btw, that Mickey Kaus, who was the recipient of Beam’s praise in 1999 and again in the more recent piece, says that Beam “scores a few points”. As with Postrel, Kaus is permalinkless, so scroll down to find the relevant bits.) She also detects a strong whiff of victim politics in Vincent’s writing. Yes, Norah, poor you. Go have a beer with David Horowitz and talk about how oppressed you are. Maybe it’ll make you feel more empowered.