Michael Wolff, prisoner of paper
: Michael Wolff, who makes his living trying to find new ways to make people think he’s an ass, now goes after the blogs in a speech:
I want to stop rambling and finish up by telling you why I don’t want to write a blog. Because I don’t. At some point in the ’50s Truman Capote was asked about Jack Kerouac, and he said, “That’s not writing, that’s typing,” which is to some degree how I feel about blogs. I even hate saying the word blog. I hate being forced to say the word blog.
When I look at that particular blog piece of software I react viscerally. I said, “Oh, I don’t want this. I don’t want to be part of this.” There’s that scene in “Doctor Zhivago” where the professionals and the intelligentsia are reduced to having to walk with the hoi polloi, and that’s what I feel when I’m forced into this blog stuff.
So I want to take what I think of as a noble and principled stand in saying that I’m not going to be part of this blog stuff. And I’m going to insist upon this until I am washed away….
Well, they do have impact. Part of it is actually involved with a kind of further devaluation of information because what it sets up is this constant second guessing of information. Which is not necessarily bad but it does lower the value of all information. You undermine that authority of information. But having been around this business now for some time I’ve learned that nothing lasts too long. By all rights, 18 months from now we should be looking back at this and all kind of embarrassed to say the word blog — I hope.
So much for Wolffman.com.
