Thursday August 14, 2003 at 2:48 PM
Dowd Misses the Point
Appearing in Blogging & Writing
In yesterday’s New York Times, esteemed columnist Maureen Dowd took to task a number of the Democratic presidential contenders. Surprisingly, her criticisms had nothing to do with their policies, plan, or proposals, focusing instead on their campaign blogs.
Ms. Dowd apparently took offense at the blogging styles of the candidates, describing them as self-serving, cheesy, and dull. Her overall criticism seems to be that the candidates just don’t get it, dismissing their efforts as “a lame attempt to be hip…(by) posting soggy, foggy, bloggy musings on the Internet.”
Why such criticism merits 500 words in the New York Times is beyond me. However, any value it might have had was destroyed by Ms. Dowd’s obvious hypocrisy and ignorance on matters of techno-hip. As part of the established class of professional opinion proffers, Ms. Dowd was all too willing to dismiss the blog phenomenon as “a genre invented by unstructured exhibitionists” posting “unblushing, unedited diaries”. Apparently, she is unaware that a number of us take our blogs quite seriously, even if they don’t garner us a paycheck.
On the balance, I actually enjoy and respect Ms. Dowd’s writings. I do wish however, that in this particular case, she had taken the time to inform her opinion before she felt the need to share it.
By the way, because the New York Times is apparently incapable of incorporating hyperlinks into their content, Ms. Dowd’s column failed to actually link to any of the blogs she mentioned. The following is offered as a correction of her omission:
