Saturday, June 26, 2004

Travel Day

I'm off to Boston. See ya there.

Moore Jeffs

So I just turned on the TV here in my hotel room, and what should I see but Jeff Jarvis, telling Aaron Brown and Jeff Greenfield that Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was inexcusably bad, both in its facts and its methods; that in an age when Us-vs.-Them mentality is ruining the world, Moore makes a Them, an enemy, of a part of Us. Jeff J's argument pushed Jeff G to defend the movie as political theater, recalling how various founding fathers were also accused of terrible venalities, excusing Moore's fact-shading and partisan nastiness by categorizing it as an honorably rooted political tradition. (Or, by translation to The Media, as entertainment.)

Jeff J sided with civility and civilization, with honest dialogue, with partisanship subordinated to open-mindedness. In other words, to the best of what we try to build here in the blogosphere.

On the other side, Jeff G sided with television.