How blogs are shattering the arrogance of the Columbia Journalism Review ... and why that's good for journalism
Laura Vanderkam
The DC Examiner
Regardless, they bypass the traditional gatekeepers, and that is changing the media criticism game. CJR comes out six times a year; blogs can fact-check the media in hours. Blogs cost less to produce than paper publications.
Oh, let me count the ways about the "why's" of blogging... Let me go back many years. Try to get a "contrary" letter to the editor published? No dice. Rebut a bias by a reporter concerning an event you were personally at? Nope. Try to get your kids' school to use a range of articles? Nope. Read an article, realize/rebut the writer/editor is leaving out some very important facts which would utterly obliterate the bias, and merely provide "news"? Can't have that! Get canned return letters from liberal journalists to your civilly critical letter: We love all the responses we get to our columns and articles; we don't have time to respond to each one, but thank you for writing. Basically, go away and stop wasting our oh-so-very-much-more important time (than yours).
Come up with a positive movement and move which doesn't reflect the views of the "popular paradigm" (liberalism); and watch a million, nay, a plethora of columns and articles bashing your movement appear....NATIONWIDE, INTERNATIONALLY.
And constantly seeing so-called "credentialed" people's opinions carry infinite weight; while your own is treated as, well, "less than". (Irony Alert!: And from the very "groups" who claim that coal miners should receive as much pay as a doctor. Pa-shaw!!)
Some of you might recall my blowing a fuse over a letter which was used to "entrench" the spoils of preferentialism in CA? The chick was former head of CA ACLU, and had been "annointed" to heading some major position within the CA U/S system. Read through every last word of her "verbally masturbatory" response -- and whaddaya see? She's lying through her teeth; but using a whole bunch of "credentials" to slam through a very rotten, discriminatory position. Call her on it? Call the U System on their monopolistic "joint ventures" masquerading as "hiring the most qualified"?
Now, hold on... I'm not suggesting here that a liberal flip should be done, now. Nor am I into revenge or bitterness. Did you know.. I learned an amazing thing years ago. I'd been to Dan's Bake Sale (Rush's Fort Collins Major Event! in 1993). Met up with some wonderful people from EVERYWHERE. And including a ton of folks from my neck of the woods; SF Bay Area, CA. And the idea was brought forth to hold a similar event in the SF Bay Area. And so we all began looking into it.... Listen up...
We were told by the San Jose "powers that Be" that we had to offer, at our event, FREE TABLES to those who held "opposing" positions to our own. Turns out, this had been going on for years; but the rule only applied to "NOT" liberal events. Then when I did gun shows.. I learned that gun show folks HAD TO "GIVE" free space to anti-gunners. All this under some type of guise of "fairness". Foul! Foul! Foul!!!!!!
Be an anti-abortion person, show up at a "liberal event" (abortion clinics) and you get RICO charges thrown at ya.
I'm not suggesting the tables be turned. I've never suggested this. But I scorn the "news" pretending to objectivity; and I rankle at liberal columnists (and academics, journalists, ad nauseum) who pretend to be fair and opened-minded.
That's the "upchuck" part: The pretense.
... and I'm only warming up to the subject.
I blog. I used to do so by other means; pre-blog. I have never demanded or even felt compelled to demand that any business or so-called news organization 'PUBLISH" my letter, or pass on my concern. It's not my way. I've been more fortunate, however, than many I do know in having my letters and such published via liberal and conservative outlets. Maybe 'cause I'm girl? :>
I don't presume to be the smartest bear in the forest. I don't presume that I must even be read or heard. I don't use any (government sponsored) outlet to force my views on anyone. To "force" my views on anyone. Libs and MSM claim they don't "force" their views on anyone. pffft. They call themselves "the news". People have been turning to the MSM for many, many years for the "news". And to learn it ain't necessarily so. Ergo, bloggers.
What used to get me? I knew the majority of Americans were conservative; but the liberal monopoly treated the majority as if they didn't exist; they'd only publish or view "minority" positions. And the viewing and airing of the "minority" position was the majority. Oxymoron, anyone?
The majority was being suppressed, oppressed, represssed by the "minority" position.
I'd call that a hostile takeover by a monopoly, dontcha' think? It's akin to "insider trading" on Wall Street; but in the public sphere.
Academia is another sore point for me. It just "dittos" the MSM, and vice versa. And meanwhile the "minority" position is heralded non-stop the adherents to "minority over majority" continue to scream about:
"We have no voice!"
"We are treated as "less than"!
And the non-stop rages and whining, mewling, puking views of "not being heard, printed, or covered" by the "minority mindset" continues.
Ward Churchill, Colorado, pretends to know that the victims of 9-11 were little Nazi's.
In essence, he pretends to commune with the dead, that last great bastion of hope for the "minority" mindset. Somehow, he *KNEW* every one murdered on 9-11 was a lil Hitler.
Democrats, Move-on, and all their little counterparts continue to claim Republicans are "Hitlers". In this vein they are, again, communing with Mr. Dead Adolf Hitler who probably in his dead state keeps a running list of who his buds are, right?
And then comes the last great whine: The revisionists. Hoover was gay, Lincoln was gay; All feminists would have upheld modern feminist ideology had they been alive today... and on and on.
What am I saying, here? The left claims to commune with the dead. Meaning, since none of the rest of us commune with the dead-- wouldn't you think this means we are considered "enemies" of the dead? Aha! Link now to the anti-American "mexicano" groups.. Day of the Dead. That's right. The left communes with dead people. The left is a gnostic's perspective on "communion". And you know the rest of the story on this: Quotas in church hiring; and bastardizing (oops, selectively "using") Scripture.
If the left communes with the dead; and they assert they do, it means they, themselves, have also gone bye-bye.
The lefties in claiming to commune with the dead vis a vis their "hitler's pals list"; are sneakily asserting themselves as in contact with "dead jews" who know Hitler's current list of pals. Or are they hearing from Hitler, personally?
So, the left tries to take all sides of the debate. Like MadHatters in Alice's Wonderland, they are perpetually claiming: No Room!
Go ahead, MSM, lefties.. continue your communion with the Dead.
The rest of us commune with the living. We remember and revere our dead. We let them rest in peace without trying to revise the dead; their life, their words. It's called "respect". We have respect for the dead", the last bastion of the "voiceless" (in liberalese).
Ward Churchill certainly has freedom of speech. What he needs is an academic challenge (like the Shockley debate, of old). Ward Churchill should have to PROVE that each person who died on 9-11 is an "Eichman". And if he cannot, he should lose his teaching credentials. He should be free forwith to publish his views continuing his thinking about the dead. Or, he should consider studying at a psychic institute for better skills in presenting his "communion with the dead" thinking. He could get good money for this.
But, if he goes unchallenged, at the Academic level -- he exists as an academic fraud. There are lots of academic frauds running amok at the "institutes of higher learning". And they commune with each other.
All it takes is one little "debate". And the nest of vipers will begin to be revealed.
This coming Wednesday is not just Ash Wednesday (a very important date for me) but also the beginning of the Chinese New Year: The year of the rooster.
Ward Churchill is such a rooster. Perhaps he can also claim some "Chinese" background.
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