Norah Vincent seems to think that she deserves some respect in the blogosphere because she’s been published.
But, I must say that the so-called blogosphere, liberating as it can be, is?as I have had the misfortune of discovering in recent days?also full of nasty riffraff and wannabe pundits who because they haven?t an earnest, original idea in their heads, fill their empty existences sniping impotently at legitimate targets. By legitimate targets I mean people who have actually had some measure of success in their professional lives, people who get published regularly in the mainstream press because, yes, they have a certain degree of talent, but moreso because they have something more to say on a weekly basis than ?boo hoo? or ?look ma, no hands.?
Norah, dear, this ain’t the L.A. Times. Success outside of the blogosphere gives you nothing inside the blogosphere aside from loads of links to start off with. Thanks for joining, you’ve added a smidgeon of a bit to the status of blogging in the eyes of the outside world. That smidgeon, I hasten to add, is far more than we here at Hraka have ever done for the blogosphere. So seriously, thanks.
Now quit whining. You’re a blogger now, even if you prefer to be called a journalist, and you don’t get to decide who is a bottom feeding blogmonster and who is not. No one does. We’re not interns at the paper, to bring you coffee and hang around hoping to hear a pearl of wisdom drop from your lips, or to flutter our eyelashes and feel faint at the slightest word of praise. Nor will your words of displeasure rock our little world. You’re just another blogger, with the same credentials as any other beginner.
Look at me, talking about beginners with four months under my belt.
Yes, you’ve gotten a lot of press inside the ’sphere, but so would Jenna Bush if she decided to blog. You issuing pronouncements from on high about what makes a blogger a bottom feeder and what doesn’t makes about as much sense and impact as it would were I doing the same thing, perhaps less. If I was to do the same thing, I’m pretty sure my “measure of professional success” would be one’s ability to write a Perl script, rather than regular publication in the mainstream press. Sadly, this would not improve my relative standing one iota.
We don’t really care what your outside credentials are, and you flashing them at us and insisting that we fall down in awe of them isn’t going to work. If it did, then the NYT wouldn’t catch the hell it catches. If the blogosphere has credentials, those credentials are links from other bloggers and I know of at least one place where there are at least 501 bloggers with better credentials than you.
Full disclosure: Including me.
Even more full disclosure: I’m doing a little dance now.
Still even more full disclosure: It’s called the “I’m bigger than Nora cha-cha-cha”
If you can’t stand a negative response, stay in the mainstream press. There’s certainly no echo chamber there, which might be why so many people feel that the Fourth Estate has failed in its responsibilities to the body politic. The whole point of blogging is in the call and response, and sometimes the response ain’t what you’d like it to be. That little bottom warming you got was nothing, I can assure you.
Nora link via Homeobox
