You're welcome, Hal.

An unrelated light bulb just hit me from posting it, maybe not so unrelated. Back in the olden blogosphere days of like 2003, the predictions that "most popular" stories would drive what news gets covered used to horrify me. That definitely seemed to suggest that print coverage would end up turning into the swamp that cable TV news had become since like Jon Benet Ramsey murder, OJ Simpson trial and Monica Lewinsky story turned the Ted Turner model upside down.

But then realize what I have been doing more and more lately! I go to all the sites I trust to have decent coverage and check out what is popular! (And even some I don't like Bretibart or The NYPost.) Because doing so gives me a good sense of the zeitgeist. And I am often enough pleasantly surprised, like with this piece. It's all about the quality of audience now. But good input can spread just as easily as bad. This freedom of the press combined with the "gone viral" thing, it's not always working out so bad. Yes we've got an actual narcissist demagogue as president, and outside agents gaming the whole system, yet still a sophisticated story like this on rhetoric shoots to #1 most read in short order at a venerable publication. It's not all doom.

I like Friedersdorf's nuance at the end, sorta suggesting she may be gaslighting herself. I imagine...why do the damn bookers keep booking these people who don't fit my memes?! Dammit I'm trying to do my narratives here!