Numbers
: What with all the heated talk about whether there are enough women on op-ed pages and in blogs -- and precisely how many is enough, by the way? -- Chris Geidner, the law dork, looks at the shelf and finds few books by women. This could go on all day -- every medium imaginable doesn't pass one test or another.
But why are race and sex the only tests? Once upon a time in America, wouldn't the test have been whether there are "enough" Irish or Italians or Germans or Poles or Catholics or Jews? These days, shouldn't other tests be whether there are "enough" gays or lesbians or rich or poor or suburbanites or urbanites or educated or uneducated or disabled or addicted or divorced or immigrant or Muslim or Hindu or Asian or Hispanic or homeless or fat or...
I am reminded of Soledad O'Brien interviewing Vin Diesel sometime ago on Today and how together they reveled in being multicultural. They defied us to label and pigeonhole and count them in one column or another: is Soledad black or Hispanic or Irish or what? They are the melting pot. They are America. No, actually, they simply are what they are. They are individuals.
That is the way I look upon this new medium: As much as old-media thinkers try to categorize and count us one way or another -- white/nonwhite, male/female, right/left -- we don't fit because, finally, here is the medium that does not lump us into masses.
Jay Rosen likes to quote Raymond Williams, sociologist and critic, who said: "There are no masses, there are only ways of seeing people as masses."
All this talk about quotas counts us as masses. That is not only inaccurate, it is esentially insulting. It refuses to recognize our individuality.
This is a medium of individuals.
This is a medium of individuals who choose to publish in it. To complain that not enough people of one sort or another do so is akin to complaining that not enough disabled people eat ketchup. Either you like ketchup or you don't; it's up to you.
The other complaint, of course, is that big media don't pay enough attention to this kind of blogger or that kind. But that's not the bloggers' fault, is it? Isn't it big media's?
But even that misses the point of the medium. It values this medium of individuals as if it were a medium of masses: the biggest voices are the only ones that are heard as if they speak for all the rest, the only ones that count. No, that's the way it was with old media, when only the few and the rich and the powerful could afford the printing press. Now, as I repeat (too damned) often, anyone can own a press. And this brings us many, many more voices, a far more diverse world of voices than ever could be heard before. We should not make the mistake of hearing those voices as a mass again.
The mass is dead. Actually, it never really lived outside of mass media.
The real test of diversity should not be the demographics of the author but the quality of the thought: Did we hear new thoughts, different views, worthwhile information, good ideas?
: Oh, and by the way... I have no idea whether Chris Geidner, who wrote the good post to which I link above, is a man or a woman. Chris is a law student. Chris is gay. Chris writes this on the about page (my emphasis): "A person doesn't become a better writer unless he is constantly sharpening the skill. Likewise, I thought, a student of the law -- it made sense -- would be most helped in fine-tuning that skill by opening up her mind to criticism of her logic and analysis."
So I don't know. And I don't care. Oh, I suppose it could be relevant on this topic. But even here, I don't care. I never would have bothered to look if it hadn't been for the topic. I still don't know Chris' gender or race or anything else about this person except that he or she writes well and said something worthwhile. That's what counts.
Media on media
: Doing a last-minute MSNBC hit on blogs regarding Terry Schiavo at about 10:45a ET.
LATER: Was also on at 3:45 with a glitch that made us switch from Microsoft IM to the antiquated NetMeeting; not wanting to take a chance, I came into the studio for another on Connected between 5 and 6p ET.
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