Who's More Egotistic Than A Blogger?

It's the political season and I'll try to stay mainly quiet this time around but one thing you should know about are my issues with media.

Oh I'm not talking about bloggers. We already know that we of the bloggosphere are legends in our own minds.

But somebody has to explain the popularity of people like Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Grace and Keith Olberman who thousands - OK millions - tune in to watch spout off in exchange for million dollar salaries.

I don't get why we don't all turn off the TV en masse. So in The Political Scene: One Angry Man: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker Peter Boyer tries to explain it to me.

"Olbermann’s success, like O’Reilly’s, is evidence of viewer cocooning—the inclination to seek out programming that reinforces one’s own firmly held political views."

“People want to identify,” Peter Griffin who sees himself as Olberman's handler says. “They want the shortcut. ‘Wow, that guy’s smart. I get him.’ In this crazy world of so much information, you look for places where you identify, or you see where you fit into the spectrum, because you get all this information all day long.”

My problem with that no matter how much I want to identify, I don't need to do it with a talking head with an ego problem.

These people are blowhards. No matter how right or wrong they are I'll still run screaming from a broadcaster - or anyone else for that matter - who is rude, sees things black and white, interrupts, talks down, throws out pithy one liners for shock effect and is generally condescending in their nicest moments.

I'm Not Amused

I may not be the average viewer who Griffin is talking about because I think a lot of the rest of us see Olberman like a Joe Buck run amok and given the keys to primetime; continually patted on the back for tirades.

To me Olberman will always be an annoying "sports guy" who is himself annoyed at the world because of a brain out of sync with the rest of the kiddies in his childhood or who is just too self-absorbed to know he shoult stuff a sock in it.  I see him as a guy who used to be mildly amusing when he stuck to sports. But it's clear that he thinks he knows more than the rest of us about everything else as well. That he has taken his schtick to MSNBC to cover alleged news- and done WELL there - just reinforces my view that the mainstream media is misguided at best and has an agenda at worst.

Is this news? Not many of us would argue that it is. Is he educating us? Encouraging us to think? Making us a better informed populace? Let's call a spade a spade.

Who Cares Who's Right

Like your kid who throws a temper tantrum in the middle of the Piggly Wiggly, it's not about what O'Reilly or Grace or Olberman are railing about or whether they have a point. It's that they've got a bully pulpit and we're rewarding them for not bringing us news but assailing us with condescending, harranguing point of view, over and over and over again.

Personality - even eccentricity is one thing. Class is another altogether. So as for me, I'll take reading a big-ego blogger any day over being lectured at by a big-headed alleged newsperson.

On the other hand, I'd love to see Olberman arm wrestle Robert Scoble.

Comments

[Matt Searles]

I actually watch Olberman quite a bit.. I guess I'm politically in his target audience, at least with respect to a right left spectrum, and I assume that colors my perception.. I see him a kind of big child in some senses.. but some percentage of the time I think he's on the right track. serving some kind of a good, and kind of enjoy him. Other times.. I get as annoyed at him as I get with everyone else on the 24 hour news networks (C-Span Excluded here of course.)

I suppose Olberman is just like the junk food in my political news / media diet?

I don't like the media much at all.. but I still watch it. Maybe I sometimes like this guys for the same reason a prisoner might fall for there captives.. Or maybe it has something to do with how I like to consume media.. there's a lack of alternatives for folks with my consumption patterns.. or a combination of all these things..

Sometimes I feel like social media is a way of escaping the matrix.. escaping this world where.. the stuff pushed on us constantly has.. that smell, you know? The smell of the power relationships that gave it birth.. and all that is ghastly in our modern age..

So yeah... great, lots of bloggers with big ego issues.. I often don't know why people complain about such things so much.. if a blog / podcaster starts annoying me.. there's an ocean of other fishes in the sea to choose from.

I suppose the other thing.. with bloggers, is that there's a certain stage folks go through with celebrity.. that's perhaps important in terms of there ego development.. and this space is young enough that a lot of folks seem to be going through that right now. The fortunate part of which is.. ego inflation does tend to lead to a kind of self destruction that tends to lead to wisdom

[Susan Reynolds]

Boomer I'd noticed from your blog that you had your own opinions, which made me read more.

George, You may really be onto something. I swear it's not just because we're getting older. I didn't like this kind of stuff when I was 30 but I do admit I'm getting more annoyed with age.

Then again there's the growing preponderance of the know-it-all class plus the willingness of lots of people to use language so casually.

Yes, I'm such a grump :)

[George Frink]

I wonder if this aversion to hyperventilating screeds (which I share) is of one piece with "our" generation's late-blooming (in my case at least) aversion to overuse of the f*** word.

[Boomer Jack Boardman]

I agree. I don't spend time watching/listening to Olberman/O'Reilly/Beck, et al. I can form my own opinions (thank you very much), and I do! ;-)