A strange (and, frankly, a bit frustrating to me) characteristic of the blogosphere is that some blogs actually achieve some level of success, simply by quoting news sources with little to no commentary or analysis.  I could probably think of a good half dozen blogs that do nothing but copy/paste/link and get a few hundred to a few thousand hits a day without offering any original content.  Hell, some of them don’t even bother with copy/paste, anymore.

At the risk of going full throttle meta- on the issue… I’m happy that some of the folks are gaining some notoriety, sure - but c’mon… It’s as if half the ‘sphere has devolved into news aggregators and the other half is spending time and energy to give their opinion on the same damned stories as everyone else.  (Politically speaking, this applies to both sides of the aisle.)  What’s become of the “individual voice” that was the selling point for the whole idea?

Frankly, the cable news/newspaper/mass media empire has won - again.  We thought we were changing the landscape but, if we’re honest about it, they’re still leading (most of) us around by the nose.  How many levels of reflection do we need on the scandal du jour before the Gaffe Patrol is satisfied?

I guess I’m jaded, yes.  But where’s the joy in it, today?  Where’s the humor and the excitement and the adventure?

I tried to read the link, but that blue-black was too difficult. I say y’uns just keep posting vodka pieces.

He’s right, and I’m often guilty—I crave the attention so I go for the Memeorandum story-of-the-minute.  That wasn’t so bad years ago when most Memeorandum stories were real news, but right now the #1 story is an Obama piece in freaking Glamour magazine.

I think the mainstream press has figured out how to parcel out little hot-button-pressing nuggets of news-like product X times a day to keep us stupid and trivial.  You know—how long did it take the cigar-chompers 50 years ago to figure out how to satisfy mass cravings for that rock and roll demonic jungle sex music with Pat Boone?