The Editor of the Wall Street Journal Talks Some Really Stupid Shit
by KTKApril 21st, 2006
Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of the WSJ editorial page, is all worked up about “disinhibition”: “breaking down of personal restraints and the endless elevation of oneself”. He’s against it, as uptight, inhibited people tend to be. But whence this threat to the social order? What is causing the breakdown of healthy repression and the spread of the “anything goes” libertinism that threatens America at its very roots?
Blogs.
Yeah, apparently this clown is serious:
The power of the Web is obvious and undeniable. We diminish it at our peril. But what if the most potent social effect to spread outward from the Internet turns out to be disinhibition, the breaking down of personal restraints and the endless elevation of oneself? It may be already.
His evidence? Well, he starts the piece with quote from the blog of Kevin Ray Underwood, the convicted cannibal-murderer of Oklahoma and apparently a founder of the hugely popular cannibal-murderer’s Webring. But there’s more:
If you opened its “blogs” page this week, the first thing you saw was a blogger’s video of a guy swilling beer and sticking his middle finger through a car window. Right below that were two blogs by women in their underwear. . . .
One researcher quotes the entry-page of a teenage girl’s blog: “You are now entering my world. My pain. My mind. My thoughts. My emotions. Enter with caution and an open mind.” . . .
Disinhibited vocabulary is now the normal way people talk on cable TV, such as on “The Sopranos” or in stand-up comedy. . . .
On the Huffington Post yesterday, there were more than 600 “comments” on Karl Rove and the White House staff shake-up. “Demoted my — the snake is still in the grass.” “He should be demoted to Leavenworth.” “Rove is Bush’s Brain, and without him, our Decider-in-Chief wouldn’t know how to wipe his own —-.”
From a primary post on the same subject on the Daily Kos, widely regarded as one of the most influential blogging sites in Democratic politics now: “I don’t give a —-. Karl Rove belongs in shackles.” “A group of village whores have taken a day off to do laundry.”
Yes - there’s dangerous stuff out there, most of which you have to go out of your way and pay money to get access to, and it could jump at out without warning. A depressed teenage girl asks people to keep an open mind about her, and the next thing you know, people are saying Karl Rove is a criminal and George Bush is a dumbass. (But, wouldn’t they be saying that . . . ? . . . no - I’m sure the blog had something to do with it.)
In addition to the fact that WSJ can’t bring itself to put the word “ass” on its own pages, what has any of this got to do with blogging? People didn’t talk like this before blogs? (I’m almost certain somebody fantasized about seeing Karl Rove in handcuffs long before blogs became popular.)
There’s a drearily-familiar tone of “what are the kids coming to these days?” about this. Precisely the same complaints have been made every year, every generation, throughout history. It’s amazing that WSJ took a break from blaming it all on “liberals” or “the 60s”, but for God’s sake, the idea that “bad” language, teenage angst, and scorn for politicians have somehow gotten worse - and that that’s due to blogging . . . that’s working awfully hard to be a dumbshit.
Of course, I couldn’t have said that if this weren’t a blog.
