Call Off The Revolution

OK, Andrew Keen wins a round. Atlanta blogger, The Shelbinator, went live on Internet TV during and after the CNN YouTube debate from the Citadel in Charleston last night. Our intrepid blogger took us afterwards, live of course, to the infamous post-debate spin room where he:

a.) wandered around in search of a water fountain
b.) snagged a few minutes with CNN's John King
c.) failed to shove enough people aside to get to Joe Biden
d.) shut down all production to chase after women

Talk about not quite ready for primetime. But Shelby looked very nice in his suit and tie, and we at home got to yell along at him in the live chatroom that uStream.tv provides for the blogger's homies. Don't know if he ever got laid though.

Overall: The cult of the amateur is moreorless as it should be: inmates running the asylum. And having a roaring good time doing so.

Take It Outside

More I think about it, and after reading Jim Long of Verge New Media's post about the power of social media, I really would like to see a pro like Jim take on the likes of that lipflapper Andrew Keen as he, Keen, gets limo-ed around the country to debate, big surprise here, other armchair media lipflappers about his tree-killer, The Cult of The Amateur. Hon, that boy Keen needs to get out on the social media street. Word.

Leave comments on Keen's yawner of a blog/book-pimping preening tool here if you think he needs a bit of calling-out.

Never Met A Rule He Didn't Like

I know this little boy, Andrew Keen, is just a Br'er Rabbit Tar Baby, itching to be thrown into the briar patch so he can sell some books, but ok... let's throw him in and scratch away! The only way to even begin to preserve what only the few really care to preserve at this point, Keen's clarion call to defend the honor of MSM, would be via massive levels of government cultural intervention... to the point of banning anonymous commenting on blogs, apparently.

Really, Mr. Keen doesn't resemble so much the contentious Br'er Rabbit as he does Laura Mallory, a person clamoring to be taken seriously, through benefit of that perceived "unbiased" media lens, by restricting some thing that has become part of the cultural mainstream on their watch, but of course without their permission. At what point did Keen or Mallory become anointed from on-high to go about and do the nation's cultural morality business? There is garden-variety narcissist; then there are these culture-sensibility clowns.

As we head to the July 11 premier of The Order of The Phoenix, let us not forget that Umbridge-esque behavior, that hyper-zealous drive to preserve a crumbling status quo, will drive people not only to despair, but to desperate action. To write laughably outrageous books as well.