As a fan of edited writing, I’m less enamored with blogging than most. Folks get upset when you talk in undemocratic terms, but I’m just not sure that good bloggers wouldn’t have become good print writers.

Which makes the self-mythologizing that much harder to stomach. For example, imagine an MSM type (or, since this is a music blog, a music critic) saying the following about himself:

“People need something to believe in. And if they can believe in you [blogger Gina Cooper], then they can believe in themselves.”

This quote comes from a less-than-cynical Washington Post review of Matt Bai’s new book about the netroots movement, The Argument.

Some have equated bloggers with the old pamphleteers, but, to me, this just seems like another incremental step in the constant churn of new technology. Nineteenth-century critics complained about the proliferation of newspapers in similar terms, as if too much opportunity meant that everyone would suddenly take up the pen.

Seems like you could say the same thing about a sporting goods store. Is the mass availability of golf clubs going to take anything away from someone who’s good enough to go pro?