{"id":1929,"date":"2009-04-19T16:34:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-19T16:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2009\/04\/the-bitter-pill-2\/"},"modified":"2009-04-19T16:34:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-19T16:34:00","slug":"the-bitter-pill-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2009\/04\/the-bitter-pill-2.html","title":{"rendered":"The Bitter Pill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
As UK readers, and American readers of UK blogs will know, The Tablet <\/span>is a Catholic liberal weekly. It is fondly referred to by those who dislike it\u2019s dissenting tone as The Bitter Pill. <\/span>In short, it is the Catholic journal conservatives love to hate.<\/div>\n
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Recently the Bitter Pill picked on Fr. Tim Finegan the Hermeneutic of Continuity blogger. In a longer editorial The Tablet<\/span>\u00a0have vented their fury on blogging and conservative Catholic bloggers in particular.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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Here is my Fr.Z type fisk of the paragraph in question:<\/div>\n
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Blogs \u2013 a corruption of web-log<\/span> \u2013 that the readers have to have \u2018blog\u2019 defined for them is hilarious. Don\u2019t be misled. This is not a journalistic attempt at clarity\u2013it is a classic, upper middle class English attempt at a back hand slam. It\u2019s an example of English snobbery. See, when you\u2019re really upper class you don\u2019t even know what such common and vulgar things are. Thus English UCTs (upper class twits) show their snobbery. Example: You mention Oprah Winfrey in conversation and they put on a fake confused look and a John Gielgud accent and say, \u201cWhat is an Oprah? Is that the same thing as an \u2018opera\u2019?\u201d<\/span>were invented in America<\/span>,the snobbery continues with one of the English\u00a0literati\u2019s\u00a0stock items: anti-Americanism. Don\u2019t you know if it comes from America it comes from the land of nose picking hillbillies who marry their sisters, believe in creationism, tote guns in their pick up trucks and slurp Mountain Dew non stop? \u201cIt\u2019s from America my dear! How simply ghastly!\u201d\u00a0<\/span>where they still thrive<\/span>, \u201cGoodness me! this funny American thingy called a \u2018blog\u2019 still thrives? You mean it hasn\u2019t died out yet? What, those people in America cling to their blogs like they cling to their religion and their guns? How awfully, awfully backward of them!\u201d Isn\u2019t it more likely that it is the print media\u2019s survival that should surprise us? What? a little weekly magazines with editors and reporters and subscribers? How quaint! You mean the English still do such things? And it still thrives? Not for long.\u00a0<\/span>particularly among the political and religious right wing.<\/span>\u00a0and there are no left wing blogs? Doesn\u2019t anyone ask why right wing talk radio and right wing blogs are a success? It\u2019s market forces. People are not getting what they want from the mainstream media, so they look elsewhere. Happily publishing and broadcasting is now totally open. Let the market decide who survives.\u00a0<\/span>What feeds the blogosphere\u2019s paranoia is a sense of resentment that \u201cthey\u201d \u2013 those in charge \u2013 are engaged in a conspiracy against \u201cus\u201d ordinary folk. <\/span>Uh. This is a two way street. \u00a0This article sounds a little bit paranoid to me. Doesn\u2019t such a tirade suggest that the writer at the Tablet feels threatened? All those invisible underground bloggers are all against \u2018us\u2019 main stream media types. They must be stopped!\u00a0<\/span>The main media is regarded as part of that conspiracy, which is why the internet \u2013 cheap, unregulated and with unlimited capacity \u2013 has drawn the bloggers to itself. In Britain, too, there are Catholic bloggers, again often right-wing, polemical and vituperative. <\/span>What!? You mean there are some British people who actually have lowered themselves to write those awful American \u2018weblog\u2019 thingies? How too too horrid? It really is ghastly! Not only British, but even a few English? Dear me, what next?\u00a0<\/span>The targets in this case often seem to include The Tablet, in some sort of fantastical conspiracy with the bishops. Generally, blogs are far from an idealised forum for an exchange of intelligent ideas that would be constructive.<\/span>\u00a0I love this. Blogs are immediate, allow for readers to comment and exchange opinions with one another at length. This compared to the typical newspaper\u2019s letters column\u2013in which editors pick and choose the letters they publish, edit them down and have to limit in time and space all the comments that are made? Anybody can publish a blog and have instant global publishing. This is called freedom of speech. This is somehow inferior to a magazine whose editor is appointed by a rarified, self appointed board of directors in order to consciously promote a particular agenda? Notice too the assumptions in this pompous statement. The blogs are all, by implication stupid and destructive and it is the main media (like the Tablet) who are obviously \u2018intelligent\u2019 and \u2018constructive\u2019.<\/span>More often they indulge in straight poison-pen character assassination without reference to any requirements of accuracy or balance.<\/span>\u00a0This is simply an untrue slander. To be sure there are some bloggers out there who are pretty nasty, but the vast number of conservative Catholic bloggers are intelligent, charitable, funny and not a few are genuinely scholarly, devout and humble.<\/span><\/p>\n

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What are you thoughts on Catholic blogging v. mainstream Catholic media?<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As UK readers, and American readers of UK blogs will know, The Tablet is a Catholic liberal weekly. It is fondly referred to by those who dislike it\u2019s dissenting tone as The Bitter Pill. In short, it is the Catholic journal conservatives love to hate. Recently the Bitter Pill picked on Fr. Tim Finegan the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Bitter Pill<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As UK readers, and American readers of UK blogs will know, The Tablet is a Catholic liberal weekly. 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