Back in August 2005, Anita Quigley had this to say about blogging:
“Why some pimply-faced geek, sicko or average Joe Blow thinks someone else wants to read every random thought that crosses their mind is beyond me. Alongside the belief that we all have a novel in us – we haven’t – blogging is the ultimate form of narcissism.�
John Quiggin 
Who’s Anita Quigley?
Someone superior to the average Joe by virtue of having a gig at the Telegraph, apparently.
People should be allowed to change their mind. And as more and more of what we say is documented and can be found via google we are going to have to become more tolerant of the phenomena. No doubt it will still be good for laughs.
I don’t know what Terje looks like but I have read his posts more often than Anita Quigley – who I have just learned about. Blogs are the ultimate in choice – people choose to post and others choose to read. I also Rrad your blog Prof Q on a regular basis whereas I have no desire to read the Telegraph at all. There are plenty of print forms which are poorly written. Anita Quigley by deriding the looks of the people who blog shows that she is worried about the competition. – especially as it is a free market solution to the problem of biased “opinion” pieces that seem to have taken the place of reporting in many of today’s papers.
Likewise I’ve just discovered who Ms Quigley is. At the same time I have learnt that she’s better looking than her blog better. Neither is she pimply. She must be a paradigm buster.
Was her page at the paper just rebadged as a ‘blog’ from on high? I got the impression that’s what happened to Op-Ed writers at the Australian.
Say Tay-aa, or Terje, whatever.
Change our minds. Change our bloody minds?? What the Hell does That Mean???
“I was wrong, but I’m still right so listen to me without apology, bloody Black-Armband
people.”
Why not just plain and simple be wrong?
I was wrong about invading Iraq.
I was wrong about the wonderful supremacy of the mighty USA and brave JWH.
Torturing people is right, if it is right (I’m the decider).
I may have been wrong about how all this is right.
Killing half a million people is OK because they get in the way of a perfect world.
Wronright and ‘Patrick’ are nice people.
[where is ‘Patrick’ these days? On holidays with Gannon, maybe]
Humility is weakness.
Knowledge is stupidity.
Listen to me because I am not of Left or Right.
Computer says “No”, sorry.
There is a simple reality, right or wrong, it is the “rules” (unwritten and unspoken but understood by all who are decent).
Try and keep your head on chook.
😉
I take AQ’s point, (and also JQ’s about the egalite of the commentariat), but it does raise another: people are awfully good at finding their faults in others. Not that I would know from personal experience. Ehem.
putting a newspaper article or column on the web and adding a comments facility and calling it a blog does not make it a blog.
Exactly FX, and putting some “random thought” that crosses one’s mind on a newspaper’s “blog” doesn’t make it a newspaer article or a column either!