Aargldy - Bigargldy - Aargldy - Bigargldy - BLAAM! [The Sound of The Commentariat's Head Exploding.]

By Matt Smith
Like magicians, opinion writers live under a special code that says practitioners may not reveal the profession's tricks lest audiences lose their sense of wonderment. This code also preserves commentators' valued role as American tribal society's social glue, without which the commonwealth would fall apart.
On Monday, Dec. 15, Scott Nichols of SoMa-based PC World violated that code. In so doing he set in motion a chain of events that may debase commentary, and even civilization itself.
In a piece titled "WSJ Accuses Google of Abandoning Net Neutrality," Nichols expressed outrage that the Wall Street Journal published an opinion column expressing sentiments different from his own. [Net neutrality is technical gobbledygook for something to do with routers and bandwidth; it's beside the point.]
"It upsets me that the Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial," writes Nichols, "in an attempt to stir up controversy and attract attention."
He went on: "What saddens me the most though is that in order to debunk its claims I needed to reference the trumped up article, giving the Wall Street Journal more traffic and justification to print more articles that are controversial for the sake of controversy."




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