PARADIGM SHIFT: Ain't It Grand?
The Blogosphere and the Pajamaheddin, by Frederick Turner, published 09/21/2004, Tech Central Station
Enjoy reading the first two paragraphs of this fine article:
"A week or two before the issue of the supposed National Guard memos on President Bush's military service came up, I speculated on this site about the emergence of a new cyber-public in response to the discrediting of many of the traditional news media. Luck made me a prophet: the exposure of the memos as forgeries was a textbook example of what I had been talking about.
"Minutes after the hapless CBS had thrown its nicely aged "evidence" up on the screen, the bloggers were at work. Little Green Footballs and Power Line took the lead. The venerable Instapundit quarterbacked. Drudge provided communications with the mainstream; the incomparable Lileks played a witty and sardonic prose obbligato, and your own TCS gave in-depth analysis. In a few hours the web had flushed out dozens of first-rate information sources: witnesses to parts of the deception, legal and political experts, specialists on documents, handwriting, typewriters, computers, copiers, typefaces, military terminology, and Texas National Guard history -- and insiders of all kinds. The story grew, solidified, and started to rock the political geography of the country."
We are in another paradigm shift. "The system is dead. Long live the system!" The system in this case is "traditional journalism," as reflected by entities such as CBS News. This article chronicles the moment of change, and how it played out. In fact, the article is a joyous celebration of the change, and we have every reason to join that celebration.
For some time now, the Blogosphere, as someone coined it, has been forming, like some cosmic entity gathering bits of space dust and matter on its way to becoming something quite spectacular. It follows the venerable tradition of talk radio which seriously changed who could give news and opine, and the other side got its voice. Traditional journalism raged at that, and still does, and the displaced johnny-one-notes of the left want laws to throttle what their incompetence cannot compete with.
As a blogger myself, focusing much more on events surrounding, involving, and underpinning Islamic jihad and the fifth columnists who seek to further it at America's expense, I have experienced what the author of this article describes:
"The new tone that entered the blogosphere was a sense of responsibility to the truth. The bloggers looked around themselves and saw that nobody else had the powerful means, the democratic and distributed organization, the robust egalitarian truculence, and the absence of interest conflict to act as the truth's final guardian and court of appeal. The mainstream journalists had abdicated their responsibility, the political parties were obviously willing to bend the truth, the academy had philosophically repudiated the concept of truth, the courts were increasing based on adversarial rhetorical virtuosity, rather than the establishment of fact. So it was up to the bloggers. "
Yes, yes, yes, that's it! I am proud to participate, whatever the size of my contribution.
As a red-white-and-blue American who totally opposes Islam and its jihad, I find the new name for bloggers to be absolutely delicious. It was someone in CBS who coined this fabulous term:
"Just at that moment one of the CBS apparatchiks, one Jonathan Klein, chose to coin a woefully contagious phrase. He attacked the blogosphere as guys sitting in their living rooms in their pajamas. The Web picked this up with unholy glee. Pajama cartoons spread across the airwaves. Somebody coined the term "the Pajamaheddin" for the bloggers, who had accepted the insult as joyfully as the rebel Impressionists had accepted their own (originally hostile) sobriquet. The blogosphere had identified itself, and named itself, and provided itself with a new Trickster identity; and its apostles would have to live up to their chosen character as the gadflies of the truth, the guerrillas of the ugly fact."
PAJAMAHEDDIN: I like that, as Andy Rooney might say.
Enjoy reading the first two paragraphs of this fine article:
"A week or two before the issue of the supposed National Guard memos on President Bush's military service came up, I speculated on this site about the emergence of a new cyber-public in response to the discrediting of many of the traditional news media. Luck made me a prophet: the exposure of the memos as forgeries was a textbook example of what I had been talking about.
"Minutes after the hapless CBS had thrown its nicely aged "evidence" up on the screen, the bloggers were at work. Little Green Footballs and Power Line took the lead. The venerable Instapundit quarterbacked. Drudge provided communications with the mainstream; the incomparable Lileks played a witty and sardonic prose obbligato, and your own TCS gave in-depth analysis. In a few hours the web had flushed out dozens of first-rate information sources: witnesses to parts of the deception, legal and political experts, specialists on documents, handwriting, typewriters, computers, copiers, typefaces, military terminology, and Texas National Guard history -- and insiders of all kinds. The story grew, solidified, and started to rock the political geography of the country."
We are in another paradigm shift. "The system is dead. Long live the system!" The system in this case is "traditional journalism," as reflected by entities such as CBS News. This article chronicles the moment of change, and how it played out. In fact, the article is a joyous celebration of the change, and we have every reason to join that celebration.
For some time now, the Blogosphere, as someone coined it, has been forming, like some cosmic entity gathering bits of space dust and matter on its way to becoming something quite spectacular. It follows the venerable tradition of talk radio which seriously changed who could give news and opine, and the other side got its voice. Traditional journalism raged at that, and still does, and the displaced johnny-one-notes of the left want laws to throttle what their incompetence cannot compete with.
As a blogger myself, focusing much more on events surrounding, involving, and underpinning Islamic jihad and the fifth columnists who seek to further it at America's expense, I have experienced what the author of this article describes:
"The new tone that entered the blogosphere was a sense of responsibility to the truth. The bloggers looked around themselves and saw that nobody else had the powerful means, the democratic and distributed organization, the robust egalitarian truculence, and the absence of interest conflict to act as the truth's final guardian and court of appeal. The mainstream journalists had abdicated their responsibility, the political parties were obviously willing to bend the truth, the academy had philosophically repudiated the concept of truth, the courts were increasing based on adversarial rhetorical virtuosity, rather than the establishment of fact. So it was up to the bloggers. "
Yes, yes, yes, that's it! I am proud to participate, whatever the size of my contribution.
As a red-white-and-blue American who totally opposes Islam and its jihad, I find the new name for bloggers to be absolutely delicious. It was someone in CBS who coined this fabulous term:
"Just at that moment one of the CBS apparatchiks, one Jonathan Klein, chose to coin a woefully contagious phrase. He attacked the blogosphere as guys sitting in their living rooms in their pajamas. The Web picked this up with unholy glee. Pajama cartoons spread across the airwaves. Somebody coined the term "the Pajamaheddin" for the bloggers, who had accepted the insult as joyfully as the rebel Impressionists had accepted their own (originally hostile) sobriquet. The blogosphere had identified itself, and named itself, and provided itself with a new Trickster identity; and its apostles would have to live up to their chosen character as the gadflies of the truth, the guerrillas of the ugly fact."
PAJAMAHEDDIN: I like that, as Andy Rooney might say.
posted by George Mason @ 9/24/2004 05:06:00 PM
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