Sunday, May 3, 2009

A motto for the Internet age

Foreseen in the 18th century by Lord Chesterfield:

Let blockheads read what blockheads write.

4 comments:

  1. There is a quote that I can't find that says something like the opposite of good writing used to be bad writing, but now it's just typing.

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  2. In Edinburgh around the same time, the Scottish judge Lord Kames asked his colleage Lord Monboddo if he had read Kames's latest book.

    "No, my Lord," said Monboddo; "you write a great deal faster than I am able to read."

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  3. John,
    I read your "blockheads" one-liner this morning and walked away with a shake-of-the-head chuckle. How pathetically true. Then I decided to take advantage of a rainy afternoon and sort through old paperwork. Pure drudgery. Every once in a while, though, I find a pearl in the mess of old receipts and statements. It happened when I dug out of the bottom of the basket a Sun column dated Dec. 1, 1990, in which you wrote about the old family tobacco barn and your aging (aren't we all?) mother. I remembered that I had found the clipped-out piece between the pages of one of my mother's books after she died in 1995. One line in particular speaks to the soul of us beleaguered newsfolk: "Choices have been made, for good or ill, not to be made again."

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  4. As a long-time lurker and fan at the original You Don't Say, and a fellow toiler in our ailing industry, may I too add my belated commiserations over recent events?

    And, although it might be a bit early to be stirring the whole Wikipedia-debate pot again, I thought you might be interested in this, published in today's Guardian. The words "chill" and "spine" come to mind.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/04/journalism-obituaries-shane-fitzgerald

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