Scenes from the Class Struggle

David Brooks is a much smarter fellow than he evinces in his anti-blog screed in the NYT today. (His editors must have loved him for it!) Sure Brooks is right that the principal enemy is Islamic fascism and its allies (delusional and otherwise) and we shouldn’t forget it. But what blog did? Not any that I read. And, although I am sure there are some, Brooks doesn’t cite any in his article – choosing to select Dennis Prager, a radio commentator, as his representative of blogging.

To make my own view clear on this, I think the danger in reporting like Michael Isikoff’s–who, I would agree with Brooks, is no “Noam Chomsky with a laptop” on more levels than one–is the influence it has on the home front, on America. Spewing disinformation of the kind Isikoff is doing contributes to the one thing above all that can cause us to lose the War on Terror – the loss of confidence in our justice and the subsequent loss of resolve to win. This victory, as I’m sure Brooks agrees, is of paramount importance to civilization. And consequentially the lack of editing that Isikoff received in this matter is disgraceful, bordering on immoral. Ann Coulter, who normally makes my few remaining hairs stand on end, has it substantially right this time.

So to be rude to Brooks, I think his real conscious/unconscious intention here is firing another salvo in the on-going struggle between blogs and mainstream media. I guess I should be used to it, but I’m not, especially from people I admre.