I agree that that’s what one should try to do, and it’s certainly possible to do it successfully, I just don’t agree that it’s easier to “combat bad assumptions” in the age of the internet than it was before the late 1990s. I hope I’m wrong, though.

Then you use the internet combat bad assumptions.

It makes sense that the internet would allow for facts and dissenting opinions to be distributed more widely and to some extent that’s been the case. But even in the internet age dissenting views and inconvenient facts are marginalized. If they were suppressed or ignored before now they’re exposed to such ferocious ridicule that people assume they must be ridiculous.

If you look at the major political decisions made in the age of the internet (going to war in Iraq, this fall’s bailout, etc.) it’s hard to argue that it’s now harder to justify bad policy with lies and distortions. I suppose one could argue that the decline of National Review’s reputation, and the resulting (one hopes) decline of its ability to excommunicate “heretical” conservatives, is a consequence of the internet age. But I’d blame Lowry’s unwillingness or inability to manage the magazine, rather than the internet per se, for the embarrassing garbage that routinely clogs up that website.

Yeah, sorry for the spelling, I was channeling General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove instead of checking my toothpaste tube. Like you, I assumed that it was an issue from the ancient days, like when Elvis was supposed to be a communist tool (somewhere I have a copy of “Rhythm, Riots And Revolution”).

Fluoridated water. “Floridized” water would, I guess, be water that in some fashion resembles Florida (warm and balmy but laden with sediment?).

Is fluoridation still a live issue in the wider far right? When I was a kid (late Sixties), my best friend’s father (who would be in his eighties now) was a Bircher and once did go off on a fluoridation rant, but other than that I only hear of it in my biannual Dr. Strangelove watching.

Quick check of La Wik shows people still arguing about it – I guess I’m out of touch on that topic too.

A threat to the reputation, but only in the minds of those who are still crazy enough to believe in it.

“We’ve always had rigorous internal debates,” [Rich Lowry] said. “But the advent of the blogosphere and e-mail and the rest of it have made it easier to blast out their impassioned instant reactions.

“It’s discomfiting, but it’s the world we live in, unless someone — Al Gore? — can uninvent the Internet.”

I agree completely that email and blogs have made it more difficult to participate in political debate while remaining civil and thoughtful. But Rich Lowry’s job isn’t to police the internet and global email traffic, or to referee the entirety of America’s public discourse. He’s the editor of a magazine–it’s part of his job to control his employees and prevent them from tarnishing the publication’s image.

There are plenty of things he could do to make National Review’s web presence less of a joke, if he felt like taking any responsibility. But I suppose it’s easier to take a Rumsfeldian approach and just throw out platitudes about the vagaries of human existence and the impossibility of controlling anything. Stuff happens, and editing a magazine is untidy.

Presumably he could counter that policing The Corner and the rest of NR’s web presence would stifle the kind of vigorous public debate that makes for a healthy democracy and an interesting publication. But less structure and lower standards are bad, not good, for public debate. Anyone looking for evidence of that proposition can just surf over to corner.nationalreview.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/media/17review.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1968/Laughter

The guy laughs and laughs before breaking down into a nasty cough.

Can’t recall which stage of the campaign it was released in, but if it was during that last week when Humphrey closed a big gap and nearly overtook Nixon, it would be thematically and tactically similar to Obama’s anti-Palin ad.