Fergie's Tech Blog

Professor fails to qualify for witness protection program

I just had to post this.

John Murrell writes over on Good Morning, Silicon Valley:

Early in May, Dr. Blaise Cronin, dean of Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science, wrote a brief piece on blogging more notable for its condescending sniping than any insights (see "Quoted") and quickly became the blogosphere's piñata for a few days. Dean Cronin has emerged from under the debris long enough to say that he is appalled, appalled, that the unwashed masses of the Web responded to his insults in kind, thus reinforcing his original characterization of blogs as Bathetically Ludicrous Online Gibberish. "For my sins," Cronin writes, "I was variously labeled a ‘jerk,’ ‘asshat,’ (new to me), ‘bastard,’ ‘fool,’ ‘flamer,’ ‘arrogant, aging academic,’ ‘snob blocking blogger’ (sic), ‘Chock-full Reservoir Of Narcissistically Inflated Nonsense’ (witty, I suppose), ‘closed-minded demagogue,’ ‘pretentious, precious twit’ (Wodehousian), ‘strutting snark,’ ‘Gorman Wannabe,’ (now, that is getting close to the bone)." Cronin bemoans a medium in which ignorant insults cannot be met with civility, but he vows to press on: "In the long run, the net effect of such mean-spiritedness will be to chill public debate, deter people from blogging and depress free trade in ideas. Personally, I would much rather face another, even angrier fusillade of blogs than be cowed into silence." Atta boy, doc, you hang in there.

posted by Fergie @ 5/23/2005 03:04:00 PM