Garrigan Cracks on Bloggers

I've never pretended to be anything on Enclave but what Molly Ivins called an "opinion monger," so why is Nashville Scene editor Liz Garrigan so ambivalent about the likes of me? Sweeping generalizations about bloggers in pajamas is a bit like me saying that all Nashville Scene writers are rather pale Michael Musto impersonators (as if the authentic Musto were not pallid enough to begin with) or that local alt-journalism seems to come down to getting a buzz on and playin' the dozens.

Just like there are some really bad apples in journalism there are some (admittedly more) funky fruits in the blogosphere. But the risk of democratized writing is benality in our midst and foolishness at the edges. So, lighten up, Liz. The "fourth estate" should not have a lock on having influence. And some of us down here at your feet who actually care about writing even still read between the covers and believe that authorship is only at an end in the Aristotelian sense that it is a virtue at which we aim rather than a status which we proclaim.