The Commentariat, again - 2 comments

This is good, from the Ministry of Truth:

For all the professional commentariat complain bitterly of their rather 'robust' and ungentle handling by some bloggers and a few anonymous blog-trolls, it should be noted that there is nothing that pisses them off quite so much as those occasions on which their standard charge of amateurism contrives to explode in their face.

This latest spate of sniping from the hallowed ranks of the professional commentariat has, I will freely admit. prompted me to contemplate a pivotal question.

Just what, exactly, is it that journalists - or rather columnists, as there is little by way of real friction between most bloggers and other subspecies of the genus 'Journalista' - possess that bloggers do not, such that these columnists routinely operate from a presumption of their own professional and intellectual superiority?

The only answer that seems to fit, having pondered the subject, is that with payment for one’s opinions comes the hubristic belief that one’s ability to string together words in a more or less grammatically correct and pleasing manner automatically confers on oneself the status of being an ecumenical authority on any and all subjects to which one turns ones attention.

My last take on this topic.