Thursday, May 1, 2008

Some Blogger, I Don't Know . . .

I read The New Yorker regularly, and I thought the April 21st issue was full of great, or at least interesting, things. I loved reading about the tigers. I loved the crazy journey to China to see how toy puffins are made. I loved the elevator story. (Sample excellent sentence from the elevator story: "to take elevatoring lightly is to risk dooming a building to dysfunction and its inhabitants to a kind of incremental purgatory." To which I say, "Dude, that is so true!")

I was honestly kind of appalled by the pro-vengeance thing, but you can't say it wasn't interesting. I even sort of enjoyed the crazy cold water swimmer, and especially the photo of her in the water with, what were they, porpoises or something?

Here I just have one tiny obsvervation to offer. Twice in this issue, writers quote bloggers by saying in effect, "some blogger" or "a blogger at X." In both cases they're quoting someone extremely easy to identify. Why not put the person's name?

In a short talk Talk of the Town thing about Robin Morgan's "Goodbye to All That," they quote a passage critical of Morgan, and ascribe it to "one blogger." A quick google search shows it's Ann Friedman, writing at Feministing. Why not say so?

Then there's Nancy Franklin writing on The Hills. I love Nancy Franklin. I don't even watch TV but I always read her reviews. Franklin writes of a subset of the cast, "A writer at Jezebel.com called this branch of 'The Hills' the 'axis of vapid.'" A quick google search shows it's Moe Tkacik. It's not even like "A writer" is so much shorter than "Moe Tkacik."

Maybe I'm being oversensitive. If I am, it's not because I'm writing a blog. There's a difference between an anonymous chitter-chatter (which is what C and C is for now, for better or for worse), and something presented as one's own. Why not give a little credit, guys?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

yes, I agree completely; I know a coupla people who do that, however, because unless one knows the individual involved (and knows that person wrote that blog) it is all too easy to pretend to be somebody else in the blogosphere. Maybe with-it NYorker authors do not want to be caught thinking a pretend person is a real person, or worse yet, that a real person, identified by name, did not actually write said piece?