The Raven

Saturday, October 5, 2002

Saturnalia

On Saturdays the Raven turns philosophical and takes a respite from the barrage of information that defines homo digitalis sapiens. First up for consideration is a question sent in by a regular Raven reader: "Dear Raven (or whatever the hell your real name is), why don't you warblog?" This is a fair question and one we'll answer thoughtfully from the perspective of inveterate C-SPAN political junkiehood.

We have lots of ideas about government, parties, and players. We have no end of opinions about what's going on and what should be done about it. And so do most pundits writing on the subject. Is one more blog that ennunciates displeasure with our governmental shortfallings really needed? And what would it accomplish—beyond preaching to the choir? Too redundant, not uplifting, not informative, and not helpful. This is not to dissuade any other writer who is convinced that his remarks on such matters are desparately needed and influencial when expressed, not by any means. But when the Raven is interested in such issues, the New York Times usually has the beat adequately covered.

"But I'm mad about what Bush is doing and I'm going keep on writing about it and I'm going to keep on telling people exactly what I—"

In Umberto Eco's Travels in Hyperreality, the author forwards the notion that sports-talk is an abstraction of an abstraction; one man threw a ball and another man caught it. In the grand scheme of things, it's not very important. Talking about that event is thus doubly meaningless. Political chat runs the same risk and therefore should be approached with an eye toward constructivism. Trendspotting, on the other hand, is obviously very useful because it allows us to predict what may happen in the future and alter our behavior and decisions in such a way as to intelligently shape the direction in which we are moving.

Synthesization is another valid activity: can you render the concrete and disparate into symbolic and unified concepts? John Ashcroft covers the exposed breast on a statue of Themis; a television station broadcasts a Jim Carrey movie and masks the genitals of Michelangelo's David; a school board bans the assignment of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. An analysis that links these actions makes them individually and collectively understandable in a way that three separate expressions of outrage do not.

But each voice is unique. Each perspective is meaningful. Each writer is valuable.

No to all of the above. Some voices are unique, some perspectives resonate, and some writers produce value. The majority of characters in the ascii-stream are as significant as the white noise broadcast by an unused channel. Find the signal amid the noise and you become a "tuner," a node in the network that bridges gaps in knowledge and peforms a worthwhile function. That's the challenge and the mission we all accept each time we sit down at the keyboard.

12:45:38 PM