The essence of blogging may be found among print columnists who still use the word "blogosphere", as if opinion and information on the Internet existed in some bizarre alternate universe where a moron can work as a safety officer at a nuclear power plant and Mom has blue hair that even Ted Geisel might find garish.
On this summer Friday, consider the power of the words offered by a columnist from Toronto's national newspaper, one Rick Salutin, doing less to defend the cerebral ruminations of Liberal leadership hopeful Mike Ignatieff from a blogger's critique, than to lament the impact of blogs on Salutin's own job.
David Rees' column on Huffington Post, while written in the vernacular of the Internet user, is far from the simplistic characterization of it offered by Salutin. Rees' comments are a long way from the Duff-addled belchings Barney might post from the barstool at Moe's, which incidentally, now boasts wireless access.
[One advantage of the Internet versus the paper and ink versuion of the Grope is that one is not trapped rading Salutin. Rather, one may search and find Rees' opinion piece before going any further with Salutin's piece. But I digress.]
Ignore Salutin's pretentious argument about "common sense" versus "anti-respect".
That's not what Salutin is on about.
Nope.
What Rees put up Salutin's nose has nothing to do with Ignatieff either.
Rather Salutin's column is all about the simple truth that leads some print columnists to dislike blogs: theirs is no longer the only voice out there offering opinions on subjects the writer may know little about.
They also are not bound to follow the Globe style manual, either, but that is a subject for another post.
-srbp-