Throwing up in my mouth

Okay guys. I want to underscore the following by stating that I rarely do this. Most of you have gotten use to my debating style throughout the semester. I like playing devil's advocate, sharpening ideas, and complicating questions. I do not like character based or ad hominem arguments, as well as echoes.

That's why it was incredibly frustrating to read Nicholas Lemann's piece in the New Yorker.  At first, I was surprised at the quality of writing.  It is terrible compared to many of the other pieces published by the New Yorker.  Just read this aloud:    

"That permits it to break the long-standing choke hold on public information and discussion that the traditional media—usually known, when this argument is made, as “gatekeepers” or “the priesthood”—have supposedly been able to maintain up to now."

The cadence is rough, a casual cacophony of syllables married to the utterly awkward relationship between colloquial and formal usage ("that's the catechism" - a contraction and an SAT word do not belong in the same sentence!).  "PermITs IT To brEAK the lonG-sTANDing CHoKE."  The linguistic dissonance in this, and many other, sentences is only outpaced by the snobbery and stupidity that pervade his content.

From what I gather, the main thrust of his argument is that new journalism has to live up to "good" standards.  It can't delight in "polemic rhetoric."  And it must not be a medium that encourages "slander, polemic, and [gasp] satire."  

Not only does he, on the one hand, ignore the value of new media (like the citizen journalist Crankydoc points to here.), but he also assumes that there is nothing inherently valuable about slander, polemic, and satirical rhetoric.  Apparently he forgot to read his Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin this morning.   

By way of evidence, he parades out straw men, like the detestable Markoff interview and toss away ad hominems "sneering [bloggers]."

But his worst rhetorical sin is that half way through the article, while pontificating on the history of American journalism, he concedes his main point.  

" I am in an especially good position to appreciate the benefits of citizen journalism at such moments, because it helped save my father and stepmother’s lives when they were stranded in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: the citizen portions of the Web sites of local news organizations were, for a crucial day or two, one of the best places to get information about how to drive out of the city. "

So, annoyed, I looked him up.  Nicholas Lemann, Dean of the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia University.