A Blog About Making Culture
Daniel Henninger is (Probably) Not a Cannibal
April 24, 2006
Mr. Henninger, I had the good fortune to review your column, in which you express, at length and in some detail, your extreme distaste for people publishing their own opinions on the Internet. I wanted to let you know that I am glad that you have published your own opinion on this matter. On the Internet.
Also, you ask, "At the risk of enabling, does the Internet mean that all the rest of us are being made unwitting participants in the personal and political life of, um, crazy people?" Your example aside, I think not. I fear you are the exception to the rule, though if I could ask your indulgence in reviewing some of my own past crazy ramblings, you might understand that I truly appreciate the intellectual dishonesty you exhibit when you mention that you "don't think the blogosphere is breeding cannibals. But..." How could you lower the legendarily high standards of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page by making such an accusation without factual evidence to back it up?
The truth is, it is still an open question whether the growth of cannibalism around the world is due to the blogosphere, or whether this growth is in fact due to instant messaging. Let's get some fact-checkers on this!
Referring to the growing trend towards "uninhibited speech", you lament, "On the Web and on the street, more people than not talk like this now." Truly, these outbreaks of free speech are a scourge and a disappointment. Your examples of this reckless tendency for people, even poor or uneducated ones, to say whatever they want serve an important purpose. The litany of transgressions helps call attention to how these cannibals-in-training are inflicting their "thoughts" on anyone without filtering, or indeed, without even asking you.
It's almost as if free expression for people who aren't editors at newspapers is a gateway to the consumption of human flesh, just as access to the postal service is a gateway to incest and bigamy. And who are the people treading this dangerous path of expressing themselves? It's not just young people on the Internet; It's exactly those whom you'd expect to hasten the end of civilization and our inexorable descent into savagery:
- Hip hop artists
- Actors on the Sopranos (curse that HBO!)
- Construction workers
- People who go to bars
And also, people who comment on the Huffington Post.
Most importantly, you've pointed out "the isolation of Web life" and the serious implications of unfettered communications. Indeed, those who would claim that bloggers, or even those who merely use email, are communicating with "other people" on the Internet have a grave misunderstanding of the medium. Unlike your own efforts to publish your opinions on the web, when any average people, or even a mere construction worker, publish our thoughts on the Internet, we have only one goal in reaching other people.
We want to eat them.
Previously: Guesting at Kottke
Richard
I was kind of hoping that Henninger would write, at the end, “By the way, I’m aware of the irony of appearing on the Internet in order to decry it. So don’t bother pointing that out.”
ksdavies 
{applause, applause, applause} {whistle, hoot, whistle}
Oh. Wait. Please don’t eat me. Thanks.
Diane Ensey
What I find pitiful is that Henninger is obvious being forced to read the opinions of the unwashed hordes, probably by some Clockwork Orange-esque group intent on punishing his for his aberrent social views.
Jesper
Zzzzzing!
Jackie J
“legendarily high standards of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page “
HA HA ha
AC
Daniel Henninger, I think what worries you is not the decline in the quality of social vocabulary. I think what worries you is the decline in the social usefulness of journalists.
After all journalists ‘journal’ society’s march forward. Elementary. They are commentators, who, in a few folded sheets of paper or on the telly tell you what’s going on out there - in the big bad world.
Now all of a sudden you have a new medium that lets the doers of the world tell you what you are doing. So you don’t need to read up third-party journals. You’ve got ringside view of what’s really going on.
If someone’s really weird - he’s telling me about it in his own words.
The ‘authenticity’ that is a part of this game is FAR more valuable than your informed commentary Mr Henninger. Let me read up what’s really going on out there and get SMARTER making my own conclusions rather then reading your edited and commercially viable opinions.
Mr Henninger, make yourself more useful. Get a blortal and point people in some direction.
Use your fancy verbiage to qualify reality, not to relay it.
Jack P Toerson
We want to eat them.
Burp!
Firas
Encore!
crazy cat
hey! I’m a hip-hopper! I don’t want to be associated with the other people on that list!
alex
Of course everybody knows all evil comes from the Internet, a dark place populated by dangerous irresponsible progressive lefties who now have this unbearable freedom of expression that a good conventional Great Leader should bring under control soon…
Henninger’s opinions sends chills down my spine. Good answer here. In fact, if you speak to any decent Jungian psychologist, he will tell you that what we humans blame most is precisely what we are deep inside (our shadow as Jung puts it)… So in fact, after all perhaps Henninger is one of us dangerous hippies out here on the web, which would even remove the paradox of his writing on the web to denounce the fact that anyone can express themselves on the web…
A couple of weeks ago the French Minister of Culture said he wanted to limit the right of bloggers to write about “public matters” unless the articles were co-signed by an “official journalist”, a journalist who has a press-card… Scary!
BigGun
You are all doomed!! I will shine my ObamaMeter upon your home and determine the “usefulness” of your thoughts. I will then send my brownshirts, ehmm, I mean the ATF to seize your Mitt Varmit rifle. I will then abort the fetus in your wife/shorty/babymoma’s belly at my socialist institution, Excuse me I mean using your Universal Healthcare Insurance plan.
Ah….I love power. Thank you Mr. Moore. I don’t know about you but I’d just assume fight.
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