James Pinkerton has a nice retrospective on Reagan but a throwaway line really grabbed me:
That was my problem, and that was the country's problem: we all spent too much time credulously absorbing the pessimism put out by the Main Stream Media, although back then it was just "The Media.
It will certainly widen out the acceptable marketplace of ideas. Without universally acknowledged gatekeepers, we're going to have to deal with excluding the quacks some other way than just starving them of attention. After all, they could just start a blog...
We're also going to find ourselves more misunderstood in the world. The world is used to looking at a few outlets and saying that this is the US. They are quite likely to continue doing so long after such a simple approach ceases to work.
Posted by TMLutas at November 5, 2005 04:52 PM