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Home Front: Politix
Sherrod Incident the Fault of Bloggers - Mostly
2010-07-25
Slow food is the response to fast food. It is about taking the time to savor rather than gulp, about celebrating the diversity of local ingredients and cuisines, about preserving traditional standards of excellence and ethical behavior.
Perhaps we'd all appreciate a return to slow news, Ruth - traditional standards of excellence and ethical behavior?
You can see, in the wake of the warp-speed exposing and retracting, firing and unfiring of Shirley Sherrod, where I'm going with this.
See, she thinks the exposing was the whole problem.
Blogging is about speed: the early post catches the Google. It is about linking, which may sound like creating a community and encouraging diversity of views but which too often deteriorates into a closed circle of reinforced preconceptions, like Journo-list, for example. It is about provocation. Shrillness sells. Even-handedness goes unclicked.
I'm sorry; are we talking MSM or something else?
Once the people in my business spent time checking and rechecking facts and first impressions or so I've been told. Opinion writers mulled things over. In the world of the blogosphere, mistakes can always be crossed through and corrected; seat-of-the-pants reactions refined.

Except: Shirley Sherrod.
The only one of a zillion or more she wishes to discuss at this point.
I am being unfair, in part, by singling out the blgosphere.
Blogosphere, Ruth, blogosphere. There's fact-checking, then there's spell checking.
The Sherrod story originated there, but the sins of Andrew Breitbart were aided and abetted by bloggers' co-conspirators on cable news. And, of course, in the Obama administration.
Of course.
Perhaps a better phrase would be slow news, which used to sound like a bad thing, back in the lazy days when those senior White House officials could wait until after the evening news to call you back and deliver their spin for the next day's paper. But the Sherrod affair reminds us all that slow, or at least slower, news is often better news.
Maybe you need some self-policing? Government policing? UN? Or the slow death of the free market?
I read blogs. I write blog posts. I revel in the immediacy of the blogosphere. Sometimes less is more and quicker is better. You may not be able to do much to improve a well-marbled steak than to quickly sear it. Sometimes cooking something for too long turns it into mush. What chef loves a crockpot? But some dishes require care and patience. So does some journalism, whatever form it takes.

Slow blogging. Think about it.
What for? To make you feel better? I'd rather think about slow news, when getting it right was more important than selling a newspaper. You could sell slow news and let the blogs thrash around in the mud. But you like the mud, don't you. You revel in it!
Posted by:Bobby

#5  And remember to always look for the “ItÂ’s NOT Racism when WE do it!™” brand, used by AmericaÂ’s top black racists for over 50 years.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2010-07-25 18:14  

#4  Last time I checked, the firing was done by the Obama Administration's Secretary of Agriculture, and if he's a blogger, it's escaped my notice.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2010-07-25 15:54  

#3  'twas bloggers that made her relate that racist incident, and furthermore bloggers that made all those people at the NAACP nod approvingly at her relating of that story.

Yup: bloggers made racism at the NAACP.
Posted by: eLarson   2010-07-25 14:44  

#2  I have a few questions here that have yet to be answered.
1. Just where did this story break?
2. Who edited the tape setting her up?
3. Who pressured a President to get involved in the firing of a director? Seems to me way down on the food chain for him, but then he called a cop stupid when the cop was right.
4. What about the rest of the tape and her other questionable remarks?
Seems to me the progressive libs that jumped the story are now all running for cover. This whole thing stinks and a good start would be with whoever released the edited tape.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2010-07-25 14:37  

#1  Sometimes cooking something for too long turns it into mush.

Sort of like this author and article?
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-07-25 14:27  

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