Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (George F. Will/Washington Post Edition)

I don't know about you, but I cannot help but smell George F. Will's fear. Here he reveals his total ignorance of Benjamin Franklin, and of other matters:

Franklin did write an autobiography: George Will, who seems to be quite troubled lately with the blogging medium, devoted his column today to comparing us -- that is, literally people like you and me -- to 18th century pamphleteers. Apparently, we don't measure up well.

Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor, says, "Thomas Paine was in effect the first blogger" and "Ben Franklin was essentially loading his persona into the MySpace of the 18th century, 'Poor Richard's Almanack.'" Not exactly. Franklin's extraordinary persona informed what he wrote but was not the subject of what he wrote. Paine was perhaps history's most consequential pamphleteer. There are expected to be 100 million bloggers worldwide by the middle of 2007... none will be like Franklin or Paine. Both were geniuses; genius is scarce.... Most bloggers have the private purpose of expressing themselves for their own satisfaction. There is nothing wrong with that, but there is nothing demanding or especially admirable about it, either.... George III would have preferred dealing with 100 million bloggers rather than one Paine.

There are a great number of things wrong with this analysis, not the least of which is Will apparently having no real familiarity with the political blogs having the kind of impact that bothers him so much. (Honestly, can anyone name an influential political blogger who uses his or her site to share their life and personal experiences? And if not, why is Will troubled by the phenomenon?)

For that matter, why on earth would the number of bloggers have any relevance to the quality of individual writers?... [T]he light of blogging geniuses is no less bright because of their colleagues.

And as for Franklin's persona not having been "the subject of what he wrote," Will is aware that Franklin wrote one of the most celebrated autobiographies in American history, is he not?

No, I honestly don't think Will is aware of the existence of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. If he ever read it, he's forgotten all about it.

Comments

[anon]

THe first half of Franklin's autobiography is very self-involved, and one ALWAYS knows exactly who the hero is. I read a biography of Franklin that claimed he wrote it out of anger and hurt after the English governing class and civil service essentially told him to shove off, and he wasn't a player in England, and never would be. And that he was rather stupid, rude vulgar and ridiculous for even attempting it, and that they were not interested (at all, thank you very much) in his presumption to even think that anyone in official England would be interested in his thoughts about how to reform the Pennsylvania government. Or how to retain the American Colonies, or anything else, for that matter.

So, according to this biograhper, whose name I can't remember right now, Franklin started writing it while it on a tour of North England and Scotland. He reputation was ruined in England, and was fast going down the tubes in the Colonies, where attitudes towards independence were moving ahead of what his were when he left the Colonies. It was partly an attempt to rehabilite himself as an authentic self made American man who was hardworking, honest, moral, and charted his own destiny, and the dupe and lackey of no one on this earth, never was nor never would be (as opposed to a ridiculous failure, a crypto-loyalist, a pretentious provincial and pathetic servile sycophant of England, which had just kicked him in the face).

Now we read it in a different way, misunderstanding at a la Mark Twain because we are not familiar with the background.

So.. no personal agenda there, I guess. The founders were all geniuses, you know, and beyond time. They would never write self-serving things with a personal agenda. But that story of Franklins Auto sounds more like Will's professed fantasy of current political bloggers than the real current politcal bloggers themselves.

Except current politcal bloggers sometimes post pics of their significant others and kids, so maybe that is what bugs Will.

[anon]

I forgot, mostly those lefty political bloggers post pictures of their pets, pretty birds, and flowers in their greenhouses. I guess that is what bugs Will --the sheer self involvement and narcissism of Friday afternoon orchid, cat and bassett blogging! What is the world coming to?

And some... even talk about their hella smart kids, too -how, how weird can these bloggers get?

[dale]

Let me compare. On the one hand, all the things I've learned reading my favorite reality based blogs. On the other hand, all the things I've learned from George Will- reading his columns, watching him on ABC...

You know- this is a pretty risky tack for most all columnists to take- especially for Will. I imagine most folks' balance sheets will be just as lop-sided as mine.

On the best blogs- such as this one- I get not only the musings of our host, but also some truley wonderful thoughts from the community of commentors. Will is right to be uneasy with the blogs. Smarter, more useful commentary- for free. His bosses might start wondering just why he is so well paid.

[quartz]

Not to mention bad quantitive analysis. A hundred million bloggers and not one genius among them? Exceedingly improbable. Even at just one genius per million that would still be a hundred geniuses. And who could deny the genius of our lost and lamented Fafblog!?

[ken melvin]

Poor Will, senility struck him down early.

[Rob]

Ahh yes, hate that bloggers might write about their personal issues. Hey George when is that next clueless baseball column coming, or how about that one about how stupid PhDs are?

[kid bitzer]

course, it's possible that Will's line about Franklin's persona not informing his writings is asserted under the restricted scope of "in Poor Richard's Almanack."

I mean, here's the exchange:

Stengel:
"Ben Franklin was essentially loading his persona into the MySpace of the 18th century, 'Poor Richard's Almanack.'"

Will:
"Not exactly. Franklin's extraordinary persona informed what he wrote but was not the subject of what he wrote."

[Which is not true: you can't read Poor Richard's Almanack without learning a huge amount about how Benjamin Franklin was...]

sc. in P.R.A.

Will is a despicable liar and Republican operative; I will be very glad to see him go down into ignominy.

But there's a pretty straightforward reading of his response that does not convict him of ignorance of Franklin's biography.

(Which, by the way, is an absolutely fabulous read. Get it in the Penguin Classics edition, and you not only get the great letter about why he only hits on older chicks, you also get his descriptions of how he discovered that the important measure of aerobic exercise is caloric output, and how he measured the absorbtive capacities of various colors by laying squares of different fabric on a field of snow and measuring how far they sunk. I don't know if it is well enough appreciated that the guy had an intuitive knack for experiment--just a natural genius at experiment, like Faraday.)

[dilbert dogbert]

When Will writes a article on how it felt to find his stuff on the front lawn when his wife kicked him out, then he will be a blogmax!

[kid bitzer]

brad--

thanks for the square-bracket response.

looks plausible to me, i.e. that one cannot read PRA without learning a lot about BF, but I honestly can't comment on the truth of it, not having read more than excerpts of PRA in a long time.

granting that, "misread PRA" is a different charge against Will than "was ignorant of BF's autobiography".

(And by the way, I *do* remember one tid-bit from the autobiography where BF wrote in such a way that even his *brother* couldn't tell he was the author. It was his first sally into authorship, I think, under what we'd now call the "sock-puppet" handle of Silence Dogood or something like that? He pretended to be a different gender, different age, everything, and his own brother printed the anonymous contributions, not realizing who wrote them--now there's a master sock-puppeteer!)

[kid bitzer]

there's also the fact that
"you learn a huge amount about BF from reading PRA"
is consistent with GW's claim that
"his persona informed what he wrote but was not the subject of what he wrote."

but how much charity do I want to expend on one of the consummate charlatans of the op-ed page?

less than I have already, to be honest.

[anon]

kid bitzer | December 22, 2006 at 08:22 AM:

"but how much charity do I want to expend on one of the consummate charlatans of the op-ed page?

less than I have already, to be honest."

You make a a good point, but always important to make a public record of how bad Will is, as a columnist and a historian (IMH non-columnist non-historian O)

I think you can make a case that BF's autobiography, at least the first half, was mostly about his public persona. It was an attempt to create a new one to relaunch his public career after the after the previous public persona got stained by a few too many spectacular public failures and scandals. I forgot that it is a bad example for his relationship to contemporary blogging, since it was only published after his death.

His extensive career as a sock-puppet, both in his own Poor Richard, and many other publications, is a better point of comparison.

[Roger Albin]

George III didn't have to deal with millions of bloggers but the British government of the time did have to deal with dozens to hundreds of antagonistic Colonial and British pamphleteers, most of whom were hardly geniuses. The individual impact of any one of these pamphlets was small but the cumulative impact was considerable and played a major role in setting the stage for the American Revolution. This story, among other things, is told well in Bailyn's seminal The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Bailyn relied mainly on the extensive pamphlet literature as the primary sources for this first rate book. The comparison between pamphleteering and blogging is not ridiculous and Will is revealing his ignorance of a basic feature of the American Revolution.

[Lewis Carroll]

Wonder how Georgie W would feel about Franklin's pamplet-lenght essay on flatulence. Considering that Will's writing is the textual equivalent of flatulence, I would think he'd be quite interested.

[Ginger Yellow]

What Roger said. If someone were to do a serious analysis I think they'd find that the level of discourse (serious or humorous) in the most popular/influential 50 blogs is considerably higer than in the 50 widest circulated 18th century pamphlets. But whether that's true or not, and to go all Jeff Jarvis for a moment, blogging is a (relatively) open conversation. That's what the George Wills of this world hate and fear about it. He admits as much in the column:

"There are, however, essentially no reins on the Web -- few means of control and direction. That is good, but it vitiates the idea that the Web's chaos of entertainment, solipsism and occasional intellectual seriousness and civic engagement is anything like a polity (a "digital democracy")."

Yes, that's what our political discourse needs - more control and direction from the elite.

[Uncle Jeffy]

"Honestly, can anyone name an influential political blogger who uses his or her site to share their life and personal experiences? And if not, why is Will troubled by the phenomenon?"

Assuming that this question isn't purely rhetorical, the answer is that it isn't the first time that George Will has been troubled by nonexistent phenomena - and I suspect that it won't be the last...

[sp]

Shorter George F. Will: I don't like blogs, ergo, no one should read them.

The guy still gives pseudointellectuals a bad name.

[Anna Haynes]

What does George Will's disclosure page look like? What does he view as his full job description? Has he shared this information, or does he not think that it would be of value to his readers?
(Brad, I *know* that if I tried to get answers from GW I'd get just as far as I did when I tried to get similar answers from Kathleen Parker and her editors, i.e. nowhere; any chance you could ask him?)

[Rick Helm]

One of the invaluable contributions of the blogging community has been to dissect the specious logic of journalists like George Will, who previously sat on their perch above the masses, free to expound endlessly without the slightest accountability to their readers to maintain a coherent line of reasoning based on the facts.

[Jonquil]

"Honestly, can anyone name an influential political blogger who uses his or her site to share their life and personal experiences?"

Bitch, Ph.D. Michael Bérubé. Pandagon. Making Light. You, yourself have been known to comment on the beauties of Berkeley, and I always enjoy it when you do.

If by "influential" you mean Kos, Atrios, and their ilk, then no. If by "influential" you mean "quoted, linked to, and given awards", then there are many second-tier politcal bloggers, particularly in the feminist sphere, who mix the personal with the political.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=7042&exhibition=7&ee_lang=eng&u=65582,0

Red-headed Woodpecker
New York City--Riverside Park.

Yes; but home is where we live, you know. Here then is a second-tier political (red even) feminist woodpecker mixing the personal (shudder) with the political.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=7039&u=69292,2

Red-headed Woodpecker at Roost Hole
New York City--Riverside Park.

Actually this is a girl woodpecker, for the head is not yet red, but the girl is practicing to become a woman, a fierce red political feminist wolf-eating woman woodpecker.

[Hedley Lamarr]

Long before he found his stuff out on the front lawn - could it have been 20 years ago? - someone satirized Will's annoying habit of quoting the Classical poets, Greeks, and Romans. He noticed, and has pretty much ended all that. Oh, that he could now make better sense without relying on those quotes.

[andres]

"I forgot, mostly those lefty political bloggers post pictures of their pets, pretty birds, and flowers in their greenhouses. I guess that is what bugs Will --the sheer self involvement and narcissism of Friday afternoon orchid, cat and bassett blogging! What is the world coming to?

And some... even talk about their hella smart kids, too -how, how weird can these bloggers get?"

Anon--you need to relax and destress a bit. Then perhaps you could laugh at lefties like Brad rather than sneering at them. anne's birds might help, but me, I like spanish poetry:

Despiértenme las aves
con su cantar sabroso no aprendido;
no los cuidados graves
de que es siempre seguido
el que al ajeno arbitrio está atenido.

Vivir quiero conmigo,
gozar quiero del bien que debo al cielo,
a solas, sin testigo,
libre de amor, de celo,
de odio, de esperanzas, de recelo.

--Fray Luiz de Leon (http://www.poesia-inter.net/)

[andres]

Oops. I guess quoting spanish poetry might just make me the George Will of the Left. Not that I'll ever do anything as silly as op-eding for the WaPo or writing columns about baseball (the sleep-aid sport). Still, Will has company, as scary as it sounds.