MemoGate Or Gaping Hell Mouth? Let Us Ponder

I have ceased to believe that the roiling confluence of "writers" which constitute the "blog" matrices are in any way connected to the democratic construct which we have come to know as the "will of the people".

When a younger, more internet-savvy Memes constituency (a hot little number who goes by the name of Vanessa) first infromed me of the concept, and the apparent reality/possability, of logging my stray thoughts on the web in the form of a live journal of the inner-workings of the Memesian archives, I was excited. Finally, a way for me to manifest my movement for posteriority.

In the beginning , I was attracted to the energy and the potential revolutionary capacity of this web uprising, what I felt to be the possability that perhaps, finally, the proletariat were gaining they're "voice" in the world.

Alas, it has not meant to be.

Instead, the blogosphere has been the object of a populist riot never the likes of which have been seen. A frightening turmoil of hysterical voices and vices have made clear they're intentions that they will be heard. A harrowing rabble.The blogosphere has become a "free market" of ideas. Yet another capitalist construct insuring that the legion "crowd" will get what it wants.

To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. In fact, I am distraught.

For instance, let's take a look at the Memogate affaire (fr.): Bloggers have claimed the attack on CBS News as their Boston Tea Party. But on close examination the scene looks less like a victory for democracy than a case of mob rule.

On September 8, just weeks before the presidential election, 60 Minutes II ran a story about how George W. Bush got preferential treatment as he glided through his time in the Texas Air National Guard. The story was anchored on four memos that, it turns out, were of unknown origin. People are saying they can't be "authenticated."

Consider the memos in question. They were supposed to have been written by Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, now dead, who supervised Bush in the Guard. We know Killian’s name was on them. We don’t know whether the memos were forged, authentic, or some combination thereof. Indeed, they could be fake but accurate. Quantuum physicstells us that sometimes things can be two things at once.

But, that didn't stop the rabble of bloggers from coming up with "theories". For example, the conservative blog Little Green Footballs posted a do-it-yourself experiment that supposedly "proved" the documents were produced on a computer. A self-proclaimed typography expert, Joseph Newcomer, copied the experiment, and posted the results on his personal Web site.

Newcomer gave the press what it wanted: a definite answer. Newcomer’s résumé — boasting a Ph.D. in computer science and a role in creating electronic typesetting — seemed impressive. His conclusions came out quickly, and were bold bordering on hyperbolic. The accompanying analysis was long and technical, discouraging close examination. Still, his method was simple to replicate, and the results were easy to understand:

"Based on the fact that I was able, in less than five minutes . . . to type in the text of the 01-August-1972 memo into Microsoft Word and get a document so close that you can hold my document in front of the ‘authentic’ document and see virtually no errors, I can assert without any doubt (as have many others) that this document is a modern forgery."

Red flags wave here, or should have. Newcomer begins with the presumption that the documents are forgeries, and as evidence submits that he can create a very similar document on his computer. He typed it up and it didn't look the same. This proves nothing — you could make a replica of almost any document using Word. Words can look like almost anything. Think about how many different fonts you have scene in ad copy alone.

I'm starting to think we need to rethink Deconstructionism. People seem to think they can get away with any "truth" now.