Some of us are old enough to remember getting the evening news from the baritones of CBS, NBC, and ABC. The news anchors of that day, for all their believability and self-importance, weren't chosen for eye candy, that's for sure. How quaint it all seems today. Like so many things in the 1950's there was a stable establishment that bordered on monopoly. Think of Detroit, Ma Bell, Sears and Wards, etc. Today the only thing comparable is the Wintel x86 monopoly.

I first became aware of new choices when Talk Radio came into prominence in the 1990's. But it hardly seemed like progress to get such an overdose of militarism and a foreign policy based on a literal interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

With the internet, all hell has broken loose. French intellectuals are indigné that the internet isn't under the centralized control of the appropriate agency. But not all French intellectuals. Part II of de Toqueville's "Democracy in America" described the breakdown of his time:

"...[they are indisposed] to trust the authority of any man whatsoever. Everyone shuts himself up tightly within himself and insists upon judging the world from there."

He was writing about the breakdown of the aristocracy. An analogous thing is happening today with the Media. The blogosphere is the new demos.

Think of the mid-Seventies movie, "Network," with William Holden, Faye Dunaway, and Robert Duvall [*]. Actually the real star was the humorous and satiric script by Paddy Chayefsky. Howard Beale, a network news anchor whose ratings are falling, finally gets canned. Then he goes into an "angry man" tirade that pulls his ratings up.

A couple weeks later he imagines himself a prophet of the airwaves. On his way to work through the lobby, he brushes past the security guard and says, "I must make my witness." He even passes out right in front of the TV cameras after having a revelation. His boss tells him that he is having a mental breakdown. Howard tells him, "I am imbued...with an absolute clarity...of perception."

I know how he feels; so do most of us bloggers. Going for a walk with a friend and holding forth brilliantly on some topic, the friend's body language seems to say, "I can't take any more of his crap for today!"

But on the blog, with the spiffy software and web-page design and prettied up with a couple digitally-doctored photos, we seem like the oracles of divine truth and wisdom. We are not just spluttering pontificators, but are clairvoyants and mad prophets of the blogosphere. Alas, a prophet is never known in his own country and time.


[*] Those who aren't Netflix subscribers can read about the classic movies that I mine for images on imdb.com .