rogue wave

Howard Kurtz is whining again.  In his Christmas Day column, Kurtz waxes nostalgaic for the Good Old Days when men were men and women were women and "truth" was a construct that was doled out to us in manageable bite-sized portions by the holy trinity of the three big networks and no one else.

I love practically everything about being wired.

I like being able to click on newspapers from around the world, see bloggers smack each other around, Google any person or thing that pops into my brain, watch news videos (and some stupid stuff, too) on YouTube, and generally surf till I drop.

But while I hook up my laptop just about anywhere, IM my buddies and continually check my buzzing BlackBerry, one thing is missing: what I call Ed Sullivan moments.

There was a time, younger readers -- pre-fax, pre-voice mail, pre-MySpace -- when families like mine sat around a black-and-white TV set with a handful of channels, watching many of the same shows. And whether Sullivan's guests were the Beatles, impressionist Frank Gorshin or Topo Gigio (a silly mouse puppet who appeared 92 times), it was a shared experience.

Oh, fie, indeed, Mr. Kurtz.  It's all gone to shit now that people like you and David Brooks are just more road pizza on the information superhighway, hasn't it?  Now just anybody can get tens of thousands of readers a day, can't they?  The peasants are revolting!  Why won't they just sit back and be told what to think anymore?  

Howard Owens has something he wants to say to you, by the way.  In fact, he's gone all polemic on your ass.

From the excellently titled "Old Fart Media vs. Distributed Media: A Response to Howard Kurtz": 

This nostalgia for mass media is misplaced. Sure those Ed Sullivan moments were fun, but they were an anomaly. They were moments in time that only a Baby Boomer could love. Mass media is a relic of the 20th Century, the only period in human history in which it existed.

Kurtz again:

How do we pick out the stories, sites, blogs, videos and info-shards that are worth our precious time? We can follow the electronic links from people and places we trust, but in an odd way, that’s bringing back the old gatekeeper role, with popular portals granting admission to a selected few content creators.

Mr. Owens, your witness: 

First, it’s not bringing back the gatekeeper role. The gatekeeper has always been with us, it’s just that the job descriptions and qualifications have changed. It’s no longer crusty city desk editors and executive producers. It’s you and me. As to Howard’s first question: You just do it. You figure it out. You are in control. You’ll find some good stuff, and you’ll also waste some time, but at least you aren’t being forced to pay for the whole CD to get just one song, or buy the whole paper just to read the comics.

… awkward old Ed Sullivan would have a hard time making it today. Maybe he’d have to sell his best segments on iTunes.

Exactly, old Mr. Kurtz. Now you get it. Assuming Mr. Sullivan produced content worth buying and mastered promoting himself and his content on YouTube, his own blog and MySpace. I think Topo Gigio would be a big hit on YouTube, unless Mr. Sullivan tried to make it all too slick.

(hat tip to Romenesko)

To tell you the truth, Kurtz's column reminds me of a certain famous quote by France's Louis XV:

Après Moi le Deluge
by Paul Jay, Chair, IWT-The Real News

The leader of the most powerful country on earth, with an unquestioned faith in his divine right to rule and the absolute power of the centralized state, was the namesake for Louisiana.

When he died in 1715, Louis XIV had built France into the dominant power in Europe, but he bankrupted the nation, forcing him to levy high taxes on the peasantry while the nobility paid none at all. Most people lived in poverty while the King built an empire.

During the empire’s demise his great great grandson Louis XV ruled France and its possessions, which included the colonial city of New Orleans. He lived for indulgence and luxury as his people descended further into despair. It is said near his end he uttered the words "Après moi le deluge." After me come the floods.

That's from an excellent essay about Hurricane Katrina, but the same could be said of the cocktail weenie circuit and all the other BushCo enablers who stood by with their thumbs up their asses while our nation was delivered headlong into the worst geopolitical strategic blunder in its history.  Old blowhards like Kurtz just sat idly by and chose not to make waves and yet they wonder why their credibility has evaporated, their readership has fled for the deeper waters of the web, and their circulation has dwindled to nearly nothing.  Oh, noblesse oblige, where have you gone?  Sense of entitlement, why hast thou forsaken me?  Who shall direct the reading habits of the rabble?  Oh, truly these must be the end times of man.