All Umbrage All the Time

Uhh,Alter. ''Lee Holmes''IS my real name. I need ''hide''behind nothing. Take some ''umbrage'', in that....[as I call NEWSWEAK on the next nonsense they trot out as I prefer fact,over rumour]. Why doesn't Alter trot on over to DAILY KOS and check out some of the vile ''umbrage'',leftwingers reserved for the now-dead Tony Snow.''Unfair raps''indeed,eh John?

The truly interesting thing about this election process that is going unreported upon is that Obama talks about change but acts just like the typical partisan politician while McCain acts in a nonpartisan manner.
The media in all forms can't deal with the actual change in politics McCain represents.

Well, acubflem, maybe there could be more differences from the past than just one. It is not so much an "only difference" as it is a new challenge to the reading eye. I use the term "eye" in honor of your presumption that those who read articles on the internet are more ignorant than those who read the same articles written on a piece of paper. There is behind some of the reading eyes a "reading mind", and behind some other eyes an ignorant and poorly thought reaction. The question is whether the privilege to respond that the internet affords somehow diminishes the writing market by requiring a dumbing down of articles to suit the uninformed to which you refer, or whether the reading of what the uninformed say in reply to the author and also to each other should have any effect at all on what the writer of the article writes in the future, this dumbing down our reading material.
Standing in a crowd to hear a speech is much different that listening to it on the radio all by yourself. The speech in the crowd with the instant feedbacks in your vicinity is similar to the difference between reading an internet article and reading the same article in a periodical written on paper. The feedbacks are monumental. Not only do you get to read the feedbacks to the author, but you get to read the feedbacks to the feedbacks.
The challenge is to learn to read faster and to comprehend more from what is read. I am elated to find that reading these articles and the accompanying blogs have dramatically increased my reading speed at an advanced age past most life spans. It is the same as being in the crowd at the speech and getting all of the feedback and lateral feeding of those in the crowd to each other. A double bonus to learn both from the speaker and the crowd around you. Your mind is the key to what you glean from all of this, and I submit that this is where it all happens.
Hence, I ask, in behalf of all of those of us who are on your list of the uninformed, and I am one of them, that you give us some slack for doing our very best to inform ourselves and and also to indulge in the great pleasure of talking back and forth to each other while we at least try to learn something.
Even though we might be rummaging in life's garbage can of information, our diet will improve as the quality of the food in the restaurant in whose garbage can we dine, improves. Maybe our foolish internet banter can even help that to happen.
Cheers.

I think the only difference now is that we hear from the uninformed. The people that want to be informed will be, the same as before the blogs. The internet has given a voice to the ignorant and now we have been forced to listen to them instead of outright ignoring them.

Or, maybe this could be that you have passed on and didn't know it, and you have gone to Journalist's Hell, where you have to read for eternity all of the angered responses to your articles that you previously thought were the accolades of a delighted reading public. Feedback, perhaps. Who knows?

Now, Jonathon, I wouldn't worry too much about this. Every new invention that affects the majority of the people is a two edged sword. Comes with the good and the bad. Sometimes even the ugly. Cell phone. Same thing. Cheap talk. Everywhere you go, people with glazed eyes holding a cell phone to their ears nearly drive into you on the road or walk into you in the grocery store or on the sidewalk. Mostly these new inventions have escalated the drivel level of our world above the drivel of the great journalism to which you refer. Just think how mad Rembrandt got when the candid camera showed up. All that high art down the toilet, now. Any ordinary fool can do this with just one click of the camera.
But, I have to agree about the blogging dropping the standards of the written word. Sort of the difference between a Rembrandt and those candid camera pictures that people bore you with when you visit.
I've wondered a lot of times if we have really progressed that much in modern times. Do the inventions make the people or do the people make the inventions?

For the Thomas Paines at Netroots: Al Qaeda says thanks for the invite, can't make it, but keep up the good fight. Hamas & Hezbollah say definitely next year. Mahmud Ahmadinejad sends his best wishes, and jokes please kiss Nancy Pelosi for him. The hints that the mainstream media are anti-Obama are so laughable they don't even merit a reply. What does, however, rate a reply is this notion that there are so many of us (as I read on comments from too-smart-for-words Democrats/Progressives/Lefties/etc on various websites) knuckle dragging, mouth breathing, stupid, dumb, ignorant, low information, inbred, flyover staters who just "wouldn't understand" the New Yorker cartoon. We understand that the people who are having a colosssal collective cow over THE image are the same people who have laughed themselves silly for years over incredibly nasty anti-Republican images & cartoons, some of which, especially the ones ridiculing Dr. Rice, are classics of sewage. And to be perfectly honest, THE image, despite Democratic protestations to the contrary, is NOT (especially when compared to the aforementioned anti-Republican cartoons) particularly powerful. It is actually rather silly & nobody could possibly take it seriously. The idea that people (stupid Republicans, I guess) who just catch a glimpse of this goofy cover will walk away with the subliminal impression of the Obamas as al Qaeda is looney-tunes. The "over-the-top fury " of Obama & his supporters just shows that they are Not Ready For Prime Time.