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Wait: Dan Shaughnessy runs Lincoln-Sudbury schools now?
By adamg on Fri, 06/06/2008 - 1:17pm
The blog-hating columnist has company in Lincoln-Sudbury School Superintendent John Ritchie, who warned graduating seniors last night not to "sink to the levels" of dangerous, foul-mouthed bloggers. Ritchie made the admonishment despite admitting that:
I never - believe or not — read any of these blogs and never will. But I have been informed of what is said: the tenor, the tone, the message.
Now, in that particular case, he's referring specifically to the comments Wicked Local sites allow on their blogs - even more specifically, about the way the local paper printed local teacher salaries - but still, Johnny, what sort of example are you setting for the kids by blabbering about things you've never actually seen?
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Comments
What a piece of work
What a piece of work
His view of blogs is funny.
His view of blogs is funny. Its just a website people make posts and comments to. I can't believe he said what he said, thats lame.
that is just fantastic.
I...I...I don't know where to begin...
He had the temerity to criticized bloggers. Oh the outrage ...
Sorry, Adam, but your knee-jerk and intellectually lazy post is pretty lame. A person can certainly have an informed opinion about things they've never seen or done. I've never seen a murder, but I'm aware they happen and I feel confident in condemning them. Ditto for, say, abortion or the loss of Amazon rain forests. I've never had an abortion and I've never been to the Amazon, but I have a perfect right to opinions on them.
"Johnny" Ritchie, as you so ungraciously labeled him (thus in part proving his point) is echoing a widely held opinion that bloggers ignore at their peril.
The ultimate irony, of course, is that you've done exactly the same thing you ridiculed him for doing. You weren't at the Lincoln-Sudbury graduation, but you had no trouble commenting on what Ritchie said after you were informed of his tenor, tone, and message.
What is this "blogging," exactly?
It's people writing about things.
I've been informed of the tone people use when writing about things. I'm agin it.
...
and by that I mean all of it.
The difference
Wicked Local (of course), posted video of his speech, so I got to see not just his words but his tone and attitude. So, no, I wasn't physically there, but in this case, I wasn't relying on somebody else's account of what he said.
What he's really upset about is not blogs per se, but anonymous comments on those blogs. Valid point, I've certainly had issues with anonymous comments, but to decry an entire class of people based on
a) one specific newspaper site (which had the audacity to print teacher salaries for his district) and
b) people who aren't even part of that class
When coupled with his admission that he's never actually seen, let alone participated in these things, shows a lack of intellectual rigor that, were I a parent in what is allegedly an outstanding school district, would have me very concerned.
Not so fast
Wrong, you saw only a fragment of his remarks. And an edited one at that. You are missing most of the context in which they were said.
No one in Sudbury had any doubt what, and whom, he was complaining about.
I agree that it's clear from
I agree that it's clear from listening to him that he's upset about anonymous comments on blogs, and not blogs in general. I also agree with you that he has a valid point -- one that creaters of Internet content themselves have argued about forever. Too bad it took having PatrickHenry rip you a new one for you to admit as much.
It's also a little puzzling that you, a blogger, don't seem to think bloggers are responsible for the comments on their blogs. Of course they are. They decide whether to moderate or not to moderate comments, and, if they choose to moderate, whether or not a particular comment can be seen by the public.
Incidentally, you've twice said that Ritchie was upset about the paper printing the salaries of teachers. Not, I think, so. From his remarks, and from the comments made on the Wicked Local blog by the reporter who was there, it's pretty clear he was upset about comments made during a local override campaign. The teacher salary story was rehashed news. A similar thing ran in Globe West in March or April, and some newspaper or another does it every year.
You're right
Although I'd read elsewhere he's really upset about anonymous comments on a Wicked Local blog about Newton, where he lives, which, if true, makes his comments even less relevant to Lincoln-Sudbury grads. But, no, I wasn't there, and it sounds like you were, so I'll take your word for what he was actually referring to.
You're also right that bloggers should be concerned about comments on their sites. I know I am (not enough, I'm sure some would say, but that's another issue). I wasn't trying to say, that they shouldn't be, though, but rather that, at least in that video, Ritchie seemed unable to tell the difference between blogs and comments (and, for that matter, between one specific blog and all blogs). And I still would argue that for somebody to excoriate something he has the chance to look at, but refuses to, is intellectually weak and not a lesson that would prepare his students for a successful college career.
I'm not sure you can really
I'm not sure you can really relate a murder, the destruction of Amazon rain forests, or abortion to the act of blogging. I understand the point you're making, but it feels like a stretch ... the action of a homicide versus the voicing of an opinion on the web... free speech, etc...
Exactly
Base moral assumptions can be made on items related to human survival, etc. It's innate in our monkey brains that we decide these things.
I'm more willing to say that the comparison to the Amazon may be more apt. I'm willing to bet that the previous poster can't give an accurate depiction of the Amazon since he hasn't been there. If he can do better than "tall trees, hot, and sometimes rainy", I'd be impressed. He certainly wouldn't be able to give any advice related to traveling through the Amazon safely...and that's what this superintendent was doing. He was attempting to give advice to the seniors about how they choose to participate online (or lack thereof) and yet he hasn't even been there to do so.
I could write a book on visiting China, but nobody should listen to it since I've never been there to know what the hell I'm talking about.
The cost of experience
Most of us can't experience murder because, thankfully, most of us won't bear witness to one. Abortion, too.
And, it's tough to get to the Amazon, though there is a ton of secondary material that depicts it in tons of detail.
And, doctors say it's not a good idea to try drugs.
But, actually obtaining real-life experience of a blog, on the other hand, is quite cheap, simple, and safe. So, Dr. Ritchie has no excuse for not having spent a half-hour or so to actually view one before the speech. (He clearly didn't spend the time memorizing it.)
The key comment for me isn't that he hasn't read a blog, but that he isn't ever going to.
I might add, Mr. Henry, that Dr. Ritchie has, in his ignorant (in the technical sense) broadside against the blogosphere included people like you, who represent the variety of opinion on this or any other blog.
In fact, a blog-published defense of Dr. Ritchie might serve as the ultimate irony in this case. (Having his screed first posted on a blog is just the first.)
Oh We've Got Trouble!
Right here in Lincoln-Sudbury
With a capital T
That rhymes with B
and that stands for BLOG!
Maybe Miller Light can do a "Real Men of Genius" series of ads for "Mr. Narrow Minded Archaic High School Administrator".
And yet, somewhere in that school system, ...
kids are probably learning how to create blogs, or how to configure software to host blogs, or both.