The Bloggers get their man

[a_majoor]

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2005/03/the_big_snooze.html
{quote]
The Big Snooze

Excerpts from the final Detective Dan Rather mystery by David Burge

It was a blustery March morning in Manhattan. I hiked up the collar on my trenchcoat and stepped out into a fresh sheet of snow that had fallen in front of the seedy West 80's flop house I call home. Pretty stuff, that snow. But just below the surface it can conceal something icy, something treacherous. Something that can make your Florsheims lose their grip, set your arms and legs windmilling spastically, cause you to make a violent, jarring, assplant into a frigid sidewalk filth-slushee. And in my line of business it's all part of a day's work.

My name is Rather. And I'm a dick.

I wiped off the seat of my coat and got in my car. After a few groans, the starter eventually coaxed the snow-covered Hudson Eight coupe to life and I wrestled it through morning traffic down Central Park West. I fishtailed into the concrete canyon of West 57th, sideswiping a supicious looking Hindu and his pretzel cart. What was he yelling? I didn't have time to think about that now. I was due at Black Rock and Captain Moonves would have bigger pretzels for me to investigate.

I screeched to a halt in front of Black Rock, but something seemed different... amiss. A gleaming black Lincoln was occupying my reserved parking place. I double parked the Hudson and walked into the CBS security desk to complain.

"Morning, Fremont," I said to the hulking guard. He was wearing an odd, nervous expression. "Could you call a tow truck? Some jamoke skizzed my jalopy slot."

"Uh, sorry, Mister Rather, it's been, um, reassigned."

"What are you talking about, Fremont?" I snapped. "Look out there -- it's clearly marked 'Reserved for CBS News Anchor.'"

"Like I said, Inspector. It's been... reassigned." He stared straight ahead.

I glared at him in disbelief for a moment. "Nuts to this," I growled, "I'm taking this up with Building Services."

I strode past the security desk, but Fremont grabbed my arm, roughly. "Sorry Mister Rather, authorized personnel only."

"What the... what's going on here?" I yelled. I felt the goon's stubby fingers clamping down through my trenchcoat. "Here's my badge, you filthy ape -- now you call up Moonves and straighten this out!"

He yanked on the badge, snapping from its lanyard. "Sorry Mister Rather, I have to take this. Direct orders from Captain Moonves himself."

I didn't have time to think. I instinctively reached inside my garbadine lapel with my free hand and wrestled Black Nellie, my trusty Sony FV-100 micophone, free of her shoulder holster. She was a cheap 300 ohm model, but Nellie was deadly in close-range interviews -- like an early encounter I had with the Nixon gang (Dan Rather #1: The Phantom CReEPs).  My right thumb switched her safety off, but before I could wheel around Fremont tackled me to the floor. He stomped my hand with his boot heel and kicked Nellie skittering across the lobby marble.

"I'm really sorry, Inspector, there's nothing I can do," he said. "I'm supposed to escort you out of the building and hand you your personal effects."

"There's got to be some sort of mistake," I said, my mind reeling as the goon chicken-winged my arms behind my back. "Let me talk to Andy Heyward, or Josh Howard... or Mary Mapes! They can vouch for me!"

He tossed me outside and I landed face-first into another sidewalk slushee. When I got to my knees I saw a tow truck pulling my Hudson down West 57th, its bumper spraying sparks as it bounced through the potholes. I heard a crash and looked to my side and saw a cardboard box on the sidewalk, containing my personal effects from 35 years on the Black Rock force: my network citation, my Peabody Award, my Successories teamwork poster.  I turned around and saw the sign in the CBS gift shop -- "Clearance Sale! All Dan Rather Merchandise, 80% Off."

I was gasping, my mind started to race... what had just happened? Who was pulling the strings? Where is the nearest dry cleaner? Then it struck me -- those Blog Boys must have infiltrated Black Rock security.

I entered the gift shop and bought a 99c CBS News coffee cup and a $2.99 60 Minutes Wednesday t-shirt. Then I headed for Grand Central Station.

********************************

I stared blankly out the window, deep in thought, as the Zephyr raced westward toward L.A. The questions kept pouring out of my mind like the cheap rotgut at a Bill Moyers PBS fundraiser. Were the Blog Boys planning another fake-but-true document heist? Was Fat Man Rove laying another ingenious forgery trap? Why were all those people outside the train window waving with one finger? I would have my answers soon enough, and I knew where to get them.

When the train pulled into L.A. Union Station, I grabbed a cable car for Los Feliz and a little jazz dive called "The Proportional Font." I had a surprise date with a certain zoot suit hepcat bloghopper, name of Charlie Johnson, and I was packing a .38 caliber corsage. I had tangled with this dangerous jazzbo before (Dan Rather #31: My Teleprompter is Deadly) and thought I'd bring a little insurance in case he went into one of his narcotic reefer-pill laughing fits.

When I entered the club it was empty, save for a bored bartender.

"What'll it be, Mac?" he snarled in a low grunt, casually wiping a glass.

"Shot of Four Roses and an answer," I said, laying a crisp fin on the bar. "I'm looking for a pachuco bebop stringplucker, goes by Charlie Johnson."

"Sorry Mac, I ain't heard or seen nobody like that."

He went to retreive the fin, but I slammed my hand on top of it. "That's funny," I said. "That sure looks like his Schwinn Black Phantom chained out front."

"What am I, Hedda Hopper?" he glared. "I don't know nothin' about nobody. Now drink your hooch and beat it before I hail a flatfoot."

I was reaching for my gat when I heard the familiar voice of Johnson on the empty stage. "It's like, cool, Jackson. Put away the heater Daddy-O. You wanna gas, like, I'm all ears."

"Can the swing lingo, Charlie. You're gonna play a little number for me called 'the CBS Security Blues,' if you catch my glissando."

"Sounds like you finally got dropped from the CBS Hit Parade, Daddy-O," laughed Johnson, noodling a riff on his electric Silvertone.

"Don't play coy with me, hipster!" I said, flashing the barrel of the heater. "You know who's behind the security heist! You know what Times New Roman is! And you're gonna tell me!"

"Troubles, mate?"

I looked stage left and squinted. The kleig lights were bouncing of the bush hat of Yobbo Blair, the maniacal Australian media hit man. His well-worn boomerang bore a notch for each of his media career-kills, and word on the street was that he fact-checked news articles... just for the sadistic "fun."

"G'day, Inspecta Retha," he said. "I'm like a shot fox ya lobbed in, cobba, so drop the rod and let's have us a piss."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but that blood-caked boomerang in his hand was doing all the translating. I toyed with the hammer on the .38 when I heard another familiar voice.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't ol' Gumshoe Dan. I can't say that it isn't a pleasure, because it isn't."

It was Johnson's old crony Simon, the Hollywood whodunit Hebrew -- a meshugganah mystery mensch who had every studio mogul in Tinseltown on his speed dial. His razor-edge fedora was trained straight at my jugular.

"Come on fellas," I smiled. "Three-on-one is blogger's fun. Why don't we sit down, all friendly-like, and discuss this caper over a bottle of gin? Maybe you can option the screenplay, Rog."

"Nix, Peepers," said Simon. "I write mysteries, not clown routines."

********************************

My trip to L.A. had seen more frozen dead ends than the aluminum bleachers at Lambeau Field, so I decided catch the next Ford Tri-Motor to the Blogosphere's sleazy Scandanavian red light district -- Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Twin Cities were rapidly becoming known as the Sin Cities among unlicensed news hounds, and there were rumors that its local journalism vice squad was on the take from the notorious Northern Alliance syndicate.

Whatever the reason, Minneapolis had become a wild west Lutheran frontier outpost for the creme de la scum of unregulated internet opinion traffickers. I decided to pay a return call on two of the town's infosleaze kingpins, Hindrocket Hinderaker and Big Trunk Johnson from the Power Line Crew. I packed my gat again, remembering how they hospitalized my old pal Nicky Coleman during my last visit (Dan Rather #32, Farewell My Producer).

Luckily, the tubby guard at Hinderaker's bank was asleep, and I was able to quietly duckwalk past him to the elevator bank. When I arrived at his penthouse offices, Hinderaker and Johnson were sharing a nasty chuckle, as they added another cup into their birdseye maple trophy case.

"I thought I smelled some fried MSM bacon," laughed Johnson. "Why don't you move along to to the Old Discredited Anchorman's Home, Rather? We've got a testimonial dinner tonight."

"Yeah, Danno, it's a little invite-only shindig called Blog of the Year," sneered Hinderaker. "Black tie, class all the way. Now scram, because we're due at Gingiss for a tux fitting."

"Why you filthy, non-journalism degreed..."

Something snapped, and I ran headlong across Hinderaker's sumptuous oriental rug, ready to unleash my fury on the two laughing blog thugs. I soon found out that the carpet was not fixed to the polished parquet underneath, and I went sliding across the room and slammed into a bookcase. I heard birds as a 16-pound volume of the U.S. Banking Code beaned me hard on the head. Momentarily dazed, I stumbled backward, flipping over Hinderaker's desk and lodging my head in his deadly trashcan.

"Ha ha! The funny man is funny."

I was blinded by the trashcan, but I knew that pipsqueak voice anywhere. It was Gnat, Fargo Jimmy's pintsized gun moll.

********************************

"I'm sorry Mister Rather, Professor Reynolds has left specific instructions that he is not to be disturbed while he grades examinations," sniffed Chalmondeley, InstaManor's imperious butler. "Perhaps the next time you are in Knoxville, you can arrange an appointment."

"I've had enough with your softshoe act, penguin," I glared. You go tell Professor Evil I got a new class for him to teach -- it's called Who Framed Dan Rather 101, and I'm the star pupil."

Chalmondeley let out an exasperated sigh. "I will relay your request to the Professor. Please wait here, and I shall return anon." He closed the massive oaken door in my face.

With Chalmondeley safely inside, I finally had my chance. I quickly flitted between the massive sculpted topiary animals on InstaManor's East lawn, working my way through a hedgrow maze and finally down an embankment to InstaLake. I hotwired one of its mahogany Chris Craft speedboats and motored across. I had finally reached Reynold's back patio.

"Inspector Rather! What a delightful surprise! Congratulations on your retirement."

Reynolds was sunning himself on the marble deck, accompanied by a chef cooking something on a gleaming outdoor range.

"May I offer you a Mimoso, inspector?" he asked, nonchalantly adjusting the sun reflector on his neck. "I find it the perfect aperitif for Jean-Claude's delicious Carribean lobster bisque."

"No thanks, I don't drink and speedboat. I came here for answers, Professor."

"Ah yes," he said, smiling with a hint of menace. "The Socratic method."

"Riddle me this," I said, bluntly, "how does a bunch of untrained jamokes with keyboards pull off the biggest faked unfake reverse forgery scam in history, frame America's top detective, and then infiltrate the security at his agency?"

"Oh, heh heh heh, Mister Rather, how very droll," he laughed. "Do you actually still believe it is bloggers who are to blame for your problems? Bush? I'm sorry, but I believe the real cause of your misery is another strange little fellow from Texas."

Texas... I think I knew what he meant.

"Thanks for the tip, Reynolds," I said. "Now I've got some information for you."

"What is it, Inspector?"

"How do you make Tennessee cookies?"

"Oh, a recipe! Quick, Jean-Claude, write this down."

"Put them in the Sugar Bowl and pound them for sixty minutes."

"Heh, Inspector," snarled Reynolds as I jumped into the speedboat. "Heh indeed."

********************************

The door to the abandoned Texas Air National Guard office building moaned as I edged it open. My heart was pounding wildly, because I knew I was moments from the answer -- the answer that tied all the loose ends to the Bush- AWOL- Guard- Mapes- Burkett - Ramirez- Rove - blogs - Heyward - font - signature - Thornburgh - reprimand - parking place - slushee caper. I craved the answers,  but somehow feared them. Who was the mysterious Texan who was behind the curtain?

The room was empty, save for a single swivel chair facing away from me.

"Hello Dan," he said. That voice... that singsong croaking... no, not...

"Walter?"

The chair swung around. Cronkite was drumming his fingers maniacally, his eyes burning with a fiery glee.

"Did you enjoy my little practical joke?" he laughed in an evil avuncular chuckle. "It took some planning, I'll grant you that."

"But... why..."

"You see Dan, when I left the network in '84, I had quite a legacy... 'Uncle Walter,' the Tiffany anchorman, Mr. Nielsen, the most trusted man in America," he said, coldly.

"It's something I wasn't quite prepared to, well, let's say, let go of," he said, casually lighting a pipe as he pulled a nickel-plated revolver from his coat. "So I had a few old network buddies dream up a few surprises for you."

"CBS is still my network, Dan. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. As for you, it's time for the Big Snooze."

His eyes narrowed.

"And that's the way it is."

 

[tomahawk6]

Blogger's have become the truth squad in the US. Recently Eason Jordan was forced to quit when bloggers came out against his comments accusing US troop of targeting journalists. CBS tried to pass off phony documents to influence the election.

 

[Rfn]

Thats a scream. Iowahawk is one of my favorite blogs.

We are living in a real media revolution. Common people can now broadcast throughout the world, and miscreants will get away with less and less. It's awesome the way some common guy can sit in his pajamas and scoop the mainstream media elite.

 

[Glorified Ape]

Blogger's have become the truth squad in the US. Recently Eason Jordan was forced to quit when bloggers came out against his comments accusing US troop of targeting journalists. CBS tried to pass off phony documents to influence the election.

I wouldn't call them the "truth squad" - that's giving them a little bit too much credit. They have no editors and little (read: no) accountability. Blogs are great for opinion pieces but I take their "factual" claims with a grain of salt. Mainstream media still has a big advantage: they retain and editorial staff and are directly accountable for blatantly false claims.

 

[Rfn]

Mainstream media still has a big advantage: they retain and editorial staff and are directly accountable for blatantly false claims.

And thats the way it should be. Unfortunately many editors and media establishment are biased or at least have a 'bent' of some sort.

(ie. CBC, CBS, FOX, National Post, Toronto Star, NY Times,.....)

and now people like Eason Jordan, Dan Rather and Jeff Gannon get exposed, for making false claims or misrepresenting themselves and getting called on it.

 

[vangemeren]

I was watching the Daily Show about a month ago and I remember a "reporter" that asked a fake question  that was more of a praise of President Bush than a question, that was later found out to be a columnist on a conservative internet newsletter and the owner of a gay pornsite. If you guys could find the name, that would be great because I would like to point out that this "truth squad" as coined by tomahawk6 is not pointed just at one political direction

 

[Rfn]

Vangemeroen,

The guy's name is Jeff Gannon. His blog is here: http://www.jeffgannon.com/

 

[winchable]

I think bloggers can play an important role in mainstream media, but by no means should they be left to their own devices, nor should they become the standard.

I mean, I have a blog..it's a filthy place with little or no moral value and contributes nothing to the greater good, yet these guys tattling on CBS technically have the same credentials and credibility I do that is: a computer with internet and none at all.
And of course, we answer to no one but ourselves.
But they can provide a service if they catch a mainstream journalist in an obvious factual error, however, I still believe that the examples of journalists being busted by bloggers will continue to remain the exception rather then the rule.

I'll still take my morning news from google over anything on blogspot.

 

[TCBF]

"We are living in a real media revolution. Common people can now broadcast throughout the world, and miscreants will get away with less and less. It's awesome the way some common guy can sit in his pajamas and scoop the mainstream media elite."

Which is why the Commies in Ottawa, working with the UN and through the CRTC, want to "control" the internet.... ;D

Tom

 

[Andyboy]

Some of you guys are missing the point of what a blogger is and frankly I'm a bit surprised. Lumping bloggers into one homogeneous mass and dismissing them out of hand is akin to dismissing radiotalk shows or phone-ins as useless wastes of time. It all depends on who calls in and who is doing the speaking.

Blogs are actually not much different from your typical newspaper; some news, and a lot of opinion. The "quality" of the opinion and the honesty about what actually is opinion will vary from newspaper to newpaper, writer to writer, just as it does for blogs. The difference, and this is crucial, in a newspaper you don't get to respond, in a blog you do. If I spot something I know to be wrong in a newspaper I can write a letter to the editor and hope that in one, two, three or maybe four days the Editor may choose to print it (edited as he sees fit of course) and hope that someone still cares about that article from three days ago to read the letter and maybe go through the same process and reply. Good newpapers tend to have more space dedicated to feedback and generate better feedback because they tend to get more relevent people reading and replying. As an example check out the letter to the editor section in your local "Sun" brand newpaper versus the Post, or Globe&Mail as Canadian examples. Blogs are similar except the capacity for people to respond, not just to the article but to each other is virtually unlimited. Just as with newspapers Blogs attract different values of opinion. Less sophisticated blogs attract less sophisticated comments and discussion, better blogs can and do attract the best and brightest in the world to comment and debate. The "tattleing" on CBS wasn't really done by a blogger by the way, it was done by a typography expert who wrote to a blogger and explained why he thought the documents were forgaries. Would that have happened in a news paper?

I guess the underlying quesion you have to ask yourself is whether or not you believe that having a journalist's "credentials" (whatever they are) actually makes their opinion worth listening to any more than anyone elses. Personally I don't. The next time you read a mainstream news article ask yourself this:who actually wrote this? How much of what is stated here is opinion? What makes the person who wrote this qualified to offer their opinion? Why do I care what this particular person thinks? Personaly I stopped caring what most journalists think, they don't necessarily know any more or less on any given suject than I do and frankly most of the time they talk out their a$$. That's my opinion anyway.

Of course there are a ton of blogs out there and it can be difficult to find one that is any good if you don't know were to start. Personally I think Belmont Club has got some really excellent analysis of current events revolving around the WOT in general and also gnerates an outstanding comments and discussion section. If it isn't to your liking check out the blogs he links to, there are a lot of really good ones out there and there are some well worth your time in reading.

 

[a_majoor]

It seems like the success of the pyjamahdeen is starting to get a reaction. Perhaps we can start serving as "offshore"  servers and web hosts for persecuted bloggers.....

The Coming War on Blogs

by James D. Miller Published  03/25/2005

It's a universal law of capitalism: when an industry faces a new and significant threat to its profits and powers it turns to the government for protection. Well, bloggers who write on current events are challenging the mainstream media (MSM), the most politically well-connected industry in America. Watch for the MSM to start using their political influence to burden bloggers.

But won't the First Amendment protect blogs? Unfortunately, courts already hold that many governmental restrictions on speech don't violate the First Amendment, and I can think of three areas in which the MSM might successfully change laws and regulations to hinder their blogger competitors:

1. Campaign Finance Reform -- Blog entries in support of a candidate could be considered political contributions to that candidate. The danger for most bloggers would lie not in contributing more than the legally permissible amount to a candidate, but rather in having to fill out the paperwork necessary to report their "political contributions".

The MSM, of course, would never permit their editorials in favor of a candidate to be considered political contributions. So to use campaign finance reform against bloggers, courts would have to distinguish between bloggers and the "legitimate" media. Any definition of bloggers will be imprecise, but this won't stop courts because most legal categories already have fuzzy boundaries. To define a blogger, courts could simply use the "I know it when I see it" approach famously employed by Justice Potter Stewart to determine whether something constituted hard-core pornography.

2. Libel Law -- The MSM used to fight aggressively against any expansion of libel law, but I predict this soon will change. The MSM can handle the burden of defending itself from libel suits much more easily than bloggers can. By increasing the scope of libel law the MSM would impose costs on all journalists which they, but not bloggers, could absorb.

3. Copyright Law -- Blogs often use information from other sources and, from what I have observed, sometimes flagrantly violate copyright laws. Imagine if Congress increased the complexity and penalties of copyright laws. Non-lawyer bloggers could never be sure what constituted legal fair use of MSM stories and information. Enhanced copyright laws could have a chilling effect on blogging.

In a fight against the MSM, blogs have two significant weaknesses: lack of monetary and legal resources. Most bloggers already lose money on their blogs. A small paperwork, monetary or legal burden imposed on bloggers would drive many of them to extinction. Expect the MSM to exploit this weakness.

The Democratic Party will likely assist the MSM in their attack on blogs, not because most blogs are pro-Republican but because blogs are not as consistently liberal as the MSM. John Kerry, for example, is calling for the government to do something to protect the MSM. As he said in a recent speech:

"The mainstream media, over the course of the last year, did a pretty good job of discerning. But there's a subculture and a sub-media that talks and keeps things going for entertainment purposes rather than for the flow of information. And that has a profound impact and undermines what we call the mainstream media of the country. And so the decision-making ability of the American electorate has been profoundly impacted as a consequence of that. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

The Republicans will, I hope, realize that on average their interests are served by protecting blogs. But the Democrats and the MSM will still use the courts and regulatory agencies to attack bloggers, and if the Democrats ever retake the Presidency and Congress expect "media reform" to become a top priority.

The founders of our great country expected that different interest groups would seek to use the political process for their personal gain. So in seeking to get the government to hinder bloggers, the MSM will be acting exactly as men such as Alexander Hamilton would have predicted. And Hamilton would not have expected the courts to save bloggers. Rather, he would have hoped that bloggers themselves would politically organize to fight back against the MSM.

James D. Miller writes The Game Theorist column for TCS and is the author of Game Theory at Work.

Copyright © 2005 Tech Central Station - www.techcentralstation.com

 

[a_majoor]

Diversity Mongers Target the Web
Can quotas rule the ultimate meritocracy?

By Heather Mac Donald

Bad move, guys. The "diversity" mongers have just brought up the one thing that they should have stayed far far away from: the web. Newsweek's technology columnist Steven Levy has declared that the lack of "diversity" among the web's most popular blogs requires corrective action. The goal? A blogosphere whose elite tier "reflects the actual population" â ” i.e., where female- and minority-written blogs are found among the top 100 blogs in the same proportion as females and minorities are found in the general population.

Levy's complaint comes on the heels of Susan Estrich's campaign against the Los Angeles Times for allegedly refusing to publish female op-ed writers, a campaign that has caused widespread wringing of editorial hands about male-dominated op-ed pages. For Levy to have mentioned the web at this moment is about as smart as inviting Stephen Hawking to an astrologers' convention: The web demolishes the assumptions behind any possible quota crusade.

A Harvard conference on bloggers and the media triggered Levy's concerns. Keith Jenkins, a Washington Post photo editor, had warned during the conference, via e-mail, that the growth of blogging threatened minority gains in journalism. Whereas the mainstream media have gotten to "the point of inclusion," Jenkins wrote, the "overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere [might] return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one."

Who would've guessed it? The mainstream media, Jenkins admits, has gotten to "the point of inclusion." You'd never know it from the ongoing agitation for more race- and gender-conscious hiring and publishing. Just this December, the National Association of Black Journalists wrung from the president of NBC News a promise to hire more black journalists at the highest levels of the newsroom. At an NABJ conference last April, a Denver Post editor accused newspapers and broadcast outlets of refusing to hire blacks and called on NABJ members to denounce such alleged discriminators. The Association tallies and publicizes black representation in newsrooms to the minutest detail, including the ratio of black supervisors to black reporters. Susan Estrich, meanwhile, has had her female law students at USC logging daily ratios of female- to male-penned op-eds in the Los Angeles Times for the last three years â ” numbers that she has used to try to bludgeon editor Michael Kinsley into instituting female quotas. The Media Report to Women, cited by the New York Times's Joyce Purnick, pumps out statistics on the percentage of female interviewees on network-news shows and of female news directors in radio, among other crucial discoveries. Female book reviewers in The New York Times Book Review are weekly stacked up against male reviewers at Edward Champion's "Return of the Reluctant."

These diversity grievances follow the usual logic: Victim-group X is not proportionally represented in some field; therefore the field's gatekeepers are discriminating against X's members. The argument presumes that there are large numbers of qualified Xs out there who, absent discrimination, would be proportionally represented in the challenged field.

If the quota mongers really believed these claims, they should welcome the web enthusiastically, since it is a world without gatekeepers and with no other significant barriers to entry. Imagine someone coping with real discrimination â ” a black tanner, say, in 1897 Alabama. To expand his business, he needs capital and access to markets beyond the black business corridors in the south. Every white lender has turned him down, however, and no white merchant will carry his leather goods, even though they are superior to what is currently on the market. Tell that leather maker that an alternative universe exists, where he can obtain credit based solely on his financial history and sell his product based solely on its quality â ” a universe where race is so irrelevant that no one will even know his own â ” and he would think he had died and gone to heaven.

For allegedly discriminated-against minority and female writers, the web is just that heaven. They can get their product directly out to readers with no bigoted editors to turn them away. As Steven Levy himself conceded in a column last December, there are virtually no start-up costs to launching a weblog: "All you need," he explained, "is some cheap software tools and something to say." In case reader prejudice is a problem, web writers can conceal their identity and simply present their ideas. And there is no established hierarchy to placate on the way to the top. As Levy wrote: "Out of the inchoate chatter of the Web, the sharpest voices simply emerge."

So here is the perfect medium for liberating all those qualified minority and female "voices" that are being silenced by the mainstream media's gatekeepers. According to diversity theory, they should be far more heavily represented in the blogosphere's upper reaches than they are in traditional journalism. In fact, the opposite is the case, as the Washington Post's Keith Jenkins pointed out. The elite blogging world is far less "diverse" than the mainstream media.

Why? Could it be that the premise of the "diversity" crusade is wrong â ” that there are not in fact hordes of unknown, competitively talented non-white-male journalists held back by prejudice? Don't even entertain the thought. Steven Levy certainly doesn't. After fleetingly rehearsing his own previous analysis of the web as a pure meritocracy, he dismisses the argument without explanation and trots out the hoariest trope in the "diversity" lexicon: "the old boy's club." Why is the top rung of the blogosphere so homogeneous? Levy asks. He answers: "It appears that some clubbiness is involved" â ” that is, that white male bloggers only link to other white male bloggers. (Susan Estrich likewise accused the Los Angeles Times's Michael Kinsley of favoring writers in his old boy's club.)

Appears to whom? Where does this alleged club meet? In fact, the web is the antithesis of a closed, exclusive society. Levy offers no evidence for a white male bloggers club beyond the phenomenon he is trying to explain: the popularity of certain blogs. If the top blogs link to other top blogs, Levy assumes that they are doing so out of race and gender solidarity. Levy is suggesting that if an Alpha blogger comes across a dazzling blog, he will link to it once he confirms that a white male writes it but pass it up if he discovers, for instance, that a Latino woman is behind its sharp and clever observations on current events. The charge is preposterous. Moreover, as Buzz Machine notes, bloggers don't know the race and gender of many of their colleagues.

Here's a different explanation for why the blogosphere is dominated by white males: because they're the ones producing the best product. Sorry, ladies, but there aren't as many of us engaged in aggressive, competitive opinionizing and nonstop consumption of politics as our male tormentors. In 2001, the Hartford Courant, desperate to promote women on its pages, analyzed its letters to the editor, expecting to find bias in letter selection. It turned out that women write only one third of the letters that the paper receives, exactly the percentage published, incidentally. Even Gail Collins, editor of the New York Times's editorial page, admitted through clenched teeth to the Washington Post in the wake of the Estrich blitz: "There are probably fewer women, in the great cosmic scheme of things, who feel comfortable writing very straight opinion stuff."

As for minorities, the skills gap in reading and writing means that, at the moment, a lower percentage of blacks and Hispanics possess the verbal acumen to produce a cutting-edge blog. For decades, blacks and Hispanics have scored 200 points below whites on the SATs' verbal section. Black high-school seniors on average read less competently than white 8th graders; Hispanic 12th graders read only slightly better than white 8th graders. And those are just the ones who are graduating. In the Los Angeles school system, which is typical of other large urban districts, 53 percent of black students and 61 percent of Hispanic students drop out before graduating from high school; most of the dropouts exit in the 9th grade. Assuming, generously, that those dropouts have 5th-grade skills, they are unlikely candidates for power blogging.

Here's Steven Levy's minimum prescription for joining the ranks of Alpha blogging: "You have to post frequently . . . link prodigiously," and, like one technology guru he describes, spend two hours daily writing your weblog and "three more hours reading hundreds of other blogs." If you have difficulty reading, you're probably not going to find that regime attractive. Obviously, many individual blacks and Hispanics possess more than the necessary skills to power their way into the top 100 blogs. But diversity zealots don't look at individuals, they look at aggregates. And in the aggregate, blacks and Hispanics lag so far behind whites in literacy skills that it is absurd to blame racial exclusion for the absence of racial proportionality on the web. Junking â Å“progressiveâ ? pedagogy, with its absurd hostility to drilling and memorization, is the only solution to the education lag; diversity bean-counting is window-dressing.

No one has succeeded in closing the skills gap yet, but over the years we've developed numerous bureaucratic devices to paper it over. These devices will undoubtedly prove highly useful in addressing what Levy calls the web's "diversity problem." Levy proposes, as an initial matter, that the power-bloggers voluntarily link to some as yet unspecified number of non-male, non-white writers. The history of 'voluntary' affirmative action efforts need not be rehearsed here; suffice it to say, once 'voluntary' race- and gender-conscious policies are proposed, mandates are not far behind.

But even Levy's "voluntary" regime calls out for regulation. How will the diversity-minded linker know the "identity" of a potential linkee? To be workable, a diversity-linkage program needs some sort of gatekeeper â ” precisely what the web has heretofore lacked. One can imagine something like a federal Digital Diversity Agency that would assign a diversity tattoo to each blog: a lavender pig, for example, signifying a white male blogger with an alternative sexual orientation. A mismatch between the diversity tattoo on a site and its content could trigger a federal audit to track down identity fraud. Let's say an allegedly black female site (tattooed with a black halo) canvassed technologies for sending humans to Mars. Regulators might find such content highly suspicious, since everyone knows that black females are supposed to write about black females.

As absurd as such a regulatory regime would have to be, it still would not be enough to make a properly "diverse" blogosphere, for the web's real diversity flaw is the role of readers. It is readers who determine which blogs zoom up to Alpha orbit, and until now they have been frustratingly outside any sort of regulatory reach. Only when Internet users are required to open up a representative sample of sites can we be confident that the web's "diversity problem" will be solved.

The diversity blogging debate has just begun, and it has already descended into self-parody. Still, it has produced one invaluable admission: The gatekeepers in the mainstream media â ” supposedly bigots who deny opportunity to members of various groups unless shamed or bullied into overcoming their prejudice â ” are not the problem, they are the solution! Far from being bigots, they are, in fact, obsessed with diversity. As Levy puts it, they have "found the will and the means to administer [the] extra care . . . required to make sure public discussion reflects the actual population." Diversity utopias, it turns out, require top-down management; open-ended democracies like the web are less certain propositions.

The next time someone charges a gatekeeper with racism or sexism â ” the next time, say, Jesse Jackson pickets a corporation â ” remember Levy's admission. It could save a lot of hot air.

â ” Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
 
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