All Umbrage All the Time

Two ironies of the new age: the Netroots demand transparency from everyone except themselves. They still usually prefer to shoot from behind a rock of anonymity. That way KellyB doesn't have to defend her (or his) unfair rap against Politico.com. Until this changes and the culture of the Web demands that people identify themselves, online political power will not extend beyond small-donor fund-raising (a hugely positive development this year). That's because members of Congress respond only to e-mails with names and addresses from their districts.

The second irony is that people often prefer rumors to facts. They so distrust the mainstream media that they may believe, say, lies about Obama's being a Muslim that reach their IN box from their cousin's friend's brother, whose nephew got it from his mother-in-law, who can't recall where it came from in the first place, over the careful reporting of a reputable news outlet.

But how to explain the venom of so many comment sections and e-mails? Like senior citizens suffering from dementia, Web users often fall prey to "disinhibition"—the lack of a filter for their most brutal thoughts. In the campaign, this takes the form of an umbrage explosion, where a day rarely passes without someone's taking grave offense over something.

In the pre-Web era, this was less of a problem. The New Yorker cover satirically depicting Obama as a flag-burning Muslim and Michelle as a gun-toting radical would have been seen by only a few hundred thousand subscribers, almost all of whom would have gotten the joke. Instead, in today's 24/7 news cycle, it was seen by tens of millions of people. It was the knowledge of such a big audience for the cartoon—other Americans who "wouldn't understand"—that fueled the over-the-top fury of the Obama supporters. You can't erase a powerful image from someone's mind any more than you can unring a bell.

One would have hoped that the presence of millions of little press lords on the Web would mean a much greater range of stories. Instead, Web traffic closely tracks the latest cable obsession. Even last week's specter of bank runs for the first time since the 1930s couldn't shift the focus from umbrage to substance. For two days, the Obama-New Yorker flap (and yes, I covered it, too) obliterated everything else in the media universe.

The good news for Obama (or for John McCain when he makes a gaffe) is that all these weekly flaps quickly pass. When flaps came monthly or quarterly in a campaign, they lingered in the system. Today's media feeding frenzies are the equivalent of junk food, leaving everyone immediately hungry again. The immediacy and ubiquity of the Web intensifies the binge-and-purge cycle, but it also makes it commonplace. Most voters don't notice or remember for long.

The umbrage and venom and brilliant crowd-sourced insights are all preserved forever in archives, but there's too much of it for anyone to track. By the end of this first Internet campaign, we'll know everything. And nothing.

© 2008