Wobegon Boy Had Me At "The Tragedy Of The Internet" & Then He Called In The Sandpipers!

Blogging is a wonderful experience; the blogger — in his pajamas — is free to write anything without contradiction. However, the Comment feature at the bottom of each blog entry does allow a snide remark or a little snark from time to time. Just prior to the advent of the Dog Days, this blogger received a snarl from the aggrieved wife of the local fishwrap's faux redneck humorist. In response to a column in which the faux redneck supplied TMI (too much information) about himself when he discussed his own treatment for cancer, this blogger referred to the faux redneck as the fishwrap's "tumor columnist" as opposed to humor columnist. Mrs. Faux Redneck took it upon herself to chastise this blogger for his lack of humanity with a snarky comment to that blog entry. Bloody, but unbowed, this blogger plods onward. If this is a (fair & balanced) tale of blogging woe (with viral background music), so be it.

[x Salon]
The Tragedy Of The Internet
By Garrison Keillor

Tag Cloud of the following article

age anybody around bill blogging canoodle crushing decided dough enormous entertainment fall gesticulate going goons guajira guantanamera guy head health healthcare industry insurance internet journalism love media million newspapers nobody open peculiar people period president print reform rolling school shout sick stamp stop stories subject tv unique wake world writers

created at TagCrowd.com

You know it's going to be a difficult day when you wake up with "Guantanamera, Guajira Guantanamera, Guantanamera, Guajira Guantanamera" going around and around in your head and it won't stop. You know that probably you should not tackle healthcare reform today though brainlessness has not stopped other people from weighing in on it.

[x YouTube/YJHP Channel]
The Sandpipers — "Guantanamera" (1966)



Here are mobs of flannel-mouthed robots denouncing Socialist Gummint Takeover as Medicare goes rolling along rather tidily and the private schemes resemble railroads of the early 19th century, when each line decided its own gauge and each stationmaster decided what time it is. Anyone who has tried to coax authorization for payment from Federated Amalgamated Health knows that, for incomprehensible standards and voluminous rules and implacable bureaucrats, the health insurance industry carries on where the Italian postal service left off. But don't mind me, I'm a man with a viral song in my head and I should go soak it.

The goons who go to town hall meetings and shout down the congressmen are museum pieces. They can shout until the bats fall off the rafters, but if you really want to know about health insurance, you just look around on the Internet and it's all there and more. The president gave a good solid tutorial on the subject back in June to the AMA, and you can still find it at YouTube. When you come to choose between him and the goons, you don't have to think too hard.

This is the beauty of new media: It isn't so transitory as newspapers and TV. Good stuff sticks around and people e-mail it to friends and slowly it floods the country.

What the new media age also means is that there won't be newspapers to send reporters to cover the next war, but there will be 6 million teenage girls blogging about their plans for the weekend. There will be no TV networks to put on dramas in which actors in costume strut and orate and gesticulate, but you can see home video of dogs and anybody's high school graduation anywhere in America. We will be a nation of unpaid freelance journalists and memoirists. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

It comes too late for Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton. In the new media age, there would not be a Watergate or a Monica Lewinsky. The president could conspire to break the law or canoodle with anybody within arm's reach and likely there would be nobody in the forest to hear that particular tree fall. And that would be just fine. All we got from those enormous Old Media events, frankly, was entertainment. They were no more enlightening than a Harold Robbins novel.

I'm an old media guy and I love newspapers, but they were brought down by a long period of gluttonous profits when they were run as monopolies by large, phlegmatic, semi-literate men who endowed schools of journalism that labored mightily to stamp out any style or originality and to create a cadre of reliable transcribers. That was their role, crushing writers and rolling them into cookie dough. Nobody who compares newspaper writing to the swashbuckling world of blogging can have any doubt where the future lies. Bloggers are writers who've been liberated from editors, and some of them take you back to the thrilling days of frontier journalism, before the colleges squashed the profession.

The Internet is a powerful tide that is washing away some enormous castles and releasing a lovely sense of independence and playfulness in the American people. Millions of people have discovered the joys of seeing yourself in print — your own words! the unique essence of yourself, your stories, your jokes, your own peculiar take on the world — out there where anybody can see it! Wowser.

Unfortunately, nobody is earning a dime from this. So much work, so little pay. It's tragic.

But one door closes and a window opens. The healthcare industry is wide open and there's a need for writers. Old people are lonely, old people want to be listened to and their stories written down, old people need entertainment. That's why I am opposed to the current healthcare reform bill -- there is nothing in there for creative therapy and the artistic fulfillment of the sick and elderly. A humorist in every hospital ward. Laughter is the best medicine. Sick people need distraction. When you wake up in the morning with "Guantanamera" going around in your head, you forget about your troubles except for that one. Ω

[Garrison Keillor is an author, storyteller, humorist, and creator of the weekly radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." The show began in 1974 as a live variety show on Minnesota Public Radio. In the 1980s "A Prairie Home Companion" became a pop culture phenomenon, with millions of Americans listening to Keillor's folksy tales of life in the fictional Midwestern town of Lake Wobegon, where (in Keillor's words) "the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average." Keillor ended the show in 1987, and 1989 began a similar new radio show titled "American Radio Company of the Air." In 1993 he returned the show to its original name. Keillor also created the syndicated daily radio feature "A Writer's Almanac" in 1993. He has written for The New Yorker and is the author of several books, including Happy to Be Here (1990), Leaving Home (1992), Lake Wobegon Days (1995), and Good Poems for Hard Times (2005). Keillor's most recent book is a new Lake Wobegon novel, Liberty. His radio show inspired a 2006 movie, "A Prairie Home Companion," written by and starring Keillor and directed by Robert Altman. Keillor graduated (B.A., English) from the University of Minneosta in 1966. His signature sign-off on "The Writer's Almanac" is "Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."]

Copyright © 2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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