Born romantic Tim writes in with a Nick Coleman analogy that may be taking things just a bit too far. But in the spirit of the times, I'll let you be the judge:
I was listening to the Coleman segment of the Alliance radio rebroadcast last night, where one of the one air personalities pointed out bloggers write for love, and claimed the high ground in the Coleman debate based in part on that. An analogy occurred to me, but bear in mind it's a little distasteful.
Nick Coleman seems to be awfully proud that he is a professional writer and you're not. It seems to me being a professional writer is like being a professional sex worker. We all have the equipment. Some of use it for love, some of us use it for money.
Before abandoning this distasteful analogy, let me point out one other parallel: when you're doing it for love, you care whether the other party is satisfied.
With a little spare time, I decided to check how original a thinker I am. Not very, but boy do some folks like to stretch an analogy. Maybe everything is like sex in some way. Here's what Google got me:
"Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for a few friends, then you do it for money." -- Anonymous (Also attributed to Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolfe)This last was the most referenced but the most strained:
"Writing is like sex. The more you think about it, the harder it is to do. It's better not to think about it so much and just let it happen." -- Stephen King
And THEN, in my 2nd class, Western Civ, I hear that Mostashari ( my teacher/advisor/director of the history dept) may FIRE Dr. Corvi because one of the girls in the class (oddly enough, Mostashari's assistant took something completely out of context and said Corvi was sexually harrassing the class. Yesterday in class, Dr. Corvi said " I don't mean to offend anyone so don't take it personally- but writing is like sex. You've got to do it to get good at it".
Hunter S. Thompson once said that writing is like sex; it's only fun for amateurs.
"Writing is like sex in that it can be very nice when you are thinking about it, terrific when you are doing it, very satisfying afterwards...and you write because you have to."Interesting theory Tim. It really puts a whole new significance to writing withering and anonymous social commentary in your underwear. Although it sounds like whoever is the author of that last quote is having a much better time blogging than I am. (I blame my dial up connection.)
Finally, on Nick Coleman and his critics, the best discussion is happening on Press Think, written by Jay Rosen of NYU. His latest post takes Coleman's perspective seriously and shows how his criticisms could have been executed so much better.
Also, this characterization of where the MSM critics from the blogosphere are coming from. I must admit, I see aspects of my motivation in both of these camps:
... those who are frustrated and angry with the traditional news media, and want answers, as well as changes, which is one group of critics--many of them pro-Bush or red staters, some of whom blog--and another group, posing as critics of bias, who see an oppportunity to discredit CBS News in the wider public sphere. They want to achieve an historic victory in a very long war between conservatives and the likes of CBS, going back to 1969 and Spiro Agnew, or even further to 1964, when Barry Goldwater met the hostility of Northeastern journalists. They want to inflict as much damage as possible on an institution they treat as hostile to Republican Truth, and to the message of the cultural right.
Rosen's previous post, a more robust criticism of Coleman, merits reading in full as well (including the comments).
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