These Kids Today, With Their Internets and Their Sock Hops

David Weigel | June 23, 2006

If you haven't been following the interminable Daily Kos-The New Republic slapfight, congratulations. You're having a great week. But it's worth dipping into the fray if only to see the reaction of Lee Siegel, the Grandpa Simpson of liberal punditry.

Even beyond the thuggishness, what I despise about so many blogurus, is the frivolity of their "readers." DailyKos might have hundreds of responses to his posts, but after five or six of them the interminable thread meanders into trivial subjects that have nothing to do with the subject that briefly provoked it. The blogosphere's lack of concentration is even more dangerous than all its rage. In the Middle East, they struggle with belief. In the United States, we struggle with attention. The blogosphere's fanaticism is, in many ways, the triumph of a lack of focus.

Please, God, no one show him Fark. Or Hit and Run.