Rear-View Reportage

Ouch! Last week’s Virtual Culture column by Russell Smith, about blogs, was launched into the media ether at roughly the same time as Maclean’s wrote about the phenomenon. (Wednesday, September 3 versus Monday, September 8 respectively). I must admit that Maclean’s certainly looks and (occasionally) reads better since their redesign back in goodness knows when (last year? The year before?). However, they are not particularly well-known for setting the popular culture agenda. To be rude, they’re often behind the times by six months to a year.

Granted, Michael Snider in Maclean’s spent most of his article explaining what a blog is, while Smith tried his valiant best to be philosophical and profound:

In fairy tales, protagonists with terrible secrets whisper them to the grass or to a hole in the ground. In the absence of such a poetic sensibility -- and in the absence of actual priests -- the Internet serves as a neutral receptor for yearnings and anger and confession: It is a cosmic ear.

To quote Alfred E. Newman, "Ecch!"