Neutrality squabble gets personal for McCurry
What started as a civilized debate about the pricing of IP services has touched off a virtual inferno in the blogosphere. After former White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry, who has aligned himself with anti-regulation group Hands Off the Internet, was the subject of a blog by Matt Stoller over at MyDD, he took Stoller's bait and responded in the comment section of the item.
That was all well and good, but apparently the jabs Stoller took at McCurry didn't sit well with the former Bill Clinton staffer. A week later, McCurry wrote a blog on The Huffington Post in which he said (partly in reference to the Net neutrality scuffle) that he doesn't "see a lot of useful dialogue" in conversations taking place on blogs. That was all it took to revive an argument that has been going on since mainstream media and the larger population of Web users caught onto the blogging movement. He further fanned the flames with a later post stating that many journalists feel "intimidated" by bloggers.
The Hotline's Blogometer does a nice job of compiling the ugly back-and-forth on McCurry's blog comments. But as the blog header warns, following this fight is not for the fainthearted. How the debate has evolved over the last two weeks represents a lot of what is good and bad about the current state of the Internet. A lot of constructive discourse has taken place--both on the topic of Net neutrality and how it may play out in partisan politics, and on the quality of much of dialogue found online. A lot of not-so-constructive exchanges have also taken place.
That's the reality of the online world, and it's not too unlike the offline world. Some sites are great; others are not. Some blogs are insightful and lightning fast; others are little more than ego boosts for the people who write them. Some real-life conversations are riveting; others are pointless blather. The value that McCurry is looking for in blog conversations is right there. It was what originally took place between him and Stoller. And it continues to take place today, as the debate over his support for HOTI and various blog comments has unfolded.
And despite his statement that much of the blog commentary around is "huffing and puffing," even he must see the value in it to some degree. After all, he's participating in it. He's blogging, submitting comments to blogs and--according to statements on the HOTI site--fighting for an independently-run Internet. Now whether or not HOTI is truly advocating a free and open Web is debatable. But I'll leave that one up to the bloggers.
Blog community response:
"We're living in a rapidly changing news ecosystem, with plenty of bruising and unloveliness mixed in with dynamism. But a lot of what I hear along these lines just sounds like whining."
--Talking Points Memo
"It's always a mixture of hilarity and tragedy when a dinosaur comes onto the blogs, spews some nonsense, and reacts angrily as he or she is called on it."
--Informed Dissent
"...It is with great respect and reverence for the press, which I consider to be indispensible to democracy, that I have become a rabid critic."
--Hullabaloo