Ghost of a flea

Paglia on blogs

Camille Paglia does the art critic stumble as she dismisses blogs while claiming some column of hers was somehow the first blog. Left-wing firing squads, it has been said, are circular. I think something of the same logic applies to being too cool to, you know, like anything.

Blog reading for me is like going down to the cellar amid shelves and shelves of musty books that you're condemned to turn the pages of. Bad prose, endless reams of bad prose! There's a lack of discipline, a feeling that anything that crosses one's mind is important or interesting to others. People say that the best part about writing a blog is that there's no editing -- it's free speech without institutional control. Well, sure, but writing isn't masturbation -- you've got to self-edit.

Now and then one sees the claim that Kausfiles was the first blog. I beg to differ: I happen to feel that my Salon column was the first true blog. My columns had punch and on-rushing velocity. They weren't this dreary meta-commentary, where there's a blizzard of fussy, detached sections nattering on obscurely about other bloggers or media moguls and Washington bureaucrats. I took hits at media excesses, but I directly commented on major issues and personalities in politics and pop culture.

If bloggers want to break out of their ghetto, they've got to acquire a sense of drama and theater as well as a flair for language. Why else should anyone read them? And the Web in my view is a visual medium -- I don't log on to be trapped on a muddy page crammed with indigestible prose.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at November 1, 2003 11:39 AM

Comments

Posted by: David Strain at November 3, 2003 12:19 AM

Posted by: Simon Jester at November 3, 2003 08:13 AM