August 22, 2005
Unless both Gene Weingarten and Joel Achenbach win major awards for writing this year, whoever is running this universe will have to answer to me.
Weingarten, "Past Perfect":
My theory is that our kids are not failing history; history is failing our kids -- it's just not interesting enough. Fortunately, our own government has provided an exciting template to deal with this problem. The solution is as obvious as the solution to the problem of not finding any weapons of mass destruction. Change history! . . .
The Monroe Doctrine
Old history lesson: Feeling the United States' hegemony threatened by continued French and Spanish interest in colonizing the New World, President James Monroe laid out a clear warning to European powers that any effort to extend their influence into the Americas would be seen as a threat to the United States, and would be met with appropriate resistance. This established a precedent for forceful American foreign policy, a national attitude that resonates today.
Problem: Zzzzzzzz.
New history lesson: If Frenchie tries,
'Den Frenchie fries.
(Jus' ain't gon' happen,
'Cause we gon' put a cap in
Vous.)
Achenbach, "The Tail That Wags the Blog":
I find that my own blogging is increasingly mechanical and formulaic. As an artist, my normal impulse is to write things that people don't care about and, ideally, can't even understand. Gibberish. But my freedom of expression is hampered by the blogging software that tracks every page view. In the old days, the age of print, a journalist had very little data on how many people read a particular story. Now I can track readership second by second, eyeball by eyeball. It's obvious what people want: political screeds and celebrity gossip. A few weeks back, I blogged three paragraphs on Karl Rove. Someone at Google News linked to the blog, and a Rovestorm erupted, a festival of vituperation, with a commensurately outstanding number of page views. Now I pretty much have to write about Rove all the time. (Contrary to what you may have heard, my blog item "Karl Rove Linked to Hoffa Disappearance" was completely fair.)