9 Responses to “Proto-Blogger: William Lloyd Garrison”

1. JonGarfunkel Says:
   August 10th, 2005 at 1:14 pm

   Aha, this has been spunoff from the previous thread about Walt Whitman, where I had relayed my brief essay suggesting the great bard to be a primogenitor of blogging.

   Ok, let equivocate now. I had identified Whitman with what I describe as the singer impulse of blogging (see my Blogger Archetypes, a hypothesis which I have pressed some of our friends in the research community to help investigate). Whitman was not pushing an issue, was not putting his life on the line, was merely celebrating himself. And I also took some time to illustrate how Whitman did things we don’t really associate with blogging at all (he constantly re-edited poems in Leaves of Grass; bloggers tend to post and not look back).

   I had identifed other archetypes of blogging, closer to journalism– stringers who collect facts and act like reports; wingers who don’t. So I think in picking Garrison and Stone, it’s the conception of the blogger as the noble fact-gatherer and soothsayer, but that’s not the regular perception. And I’ve even talked with people who are using online media for “journalactivism” but they don’t want to be associated with the term bloggers. I don’t even call myself a blogger… but trying to envision them through Whitman I was finally able to appreciate the folk art of it all.

2. fconte Says:
   August 30th, 2005 at 7:58 pm

   Tonight’s show was highly informative spoiled at the end by caller had the gumption to compare Paul Krugman, the little liar, with WL Garrison. What are some callers smoking? How we have defined our standards of greatness downward. Paul Krugman is a running joke.

3. JonGarfunkel Says:
   August 30th, 2005 at 8:08 pm

   Chris Daly– sorry I just caught the last ten minutes of the show live– I will listen to the ‘cast.

   I’d also nominate Krugman as a contemporary– even if you dislike him, as fconte does, he is passionate and focussed on his issues. But maybe self-publisher Joshua Micah Marshall better fits the model.

4. fconte Says:
   August 30th, 2005 at 8:56 pm

   Look I’ll accept I.F. Stone as one who follows in the footsteps of WLG long before Krugman. I think Jon and the caller are trying to make tenuous analogies. What does it cost Krugman compared to what it cost Garrison and I.F. Stone? Is this the best the left can come up with? Krugman? Please!

5. JonGarfunkel Says:
   August 30th, 2005 at 11:23 pm

   Ok, I’m not going to touch your labelling Krugman as “the little liar” and “a running joke.” But listening to the show now, I can see there’s really no comparison to Krugman, or anybody today. Who is putting themselves on the line like this– burning the Constitution, suggesting secession, going to jail?

   “Maybe only Moses…” as John Jay Smith said, and Chris Lydon repeated.

   Then again, there are certainly self-publishers today whom we may think of his deluded, but there is no cause anywhere near as great today. Maybe Ralph Nader in his heyday, more an organizer than a writer…

6. jc Says:
   August 31st, 2005 at 12:17 am

   Nader, as tired as he must be by now, is still in his heyday. It is this society that has let its heyday (and Nader) slip away.

7. fconte Says:
   August 31st, 2005 at 3:00 pm

   Jon

   Nader is a good example. He’s toiled the fields for sure.

8. Debbie R. Says:
   August 31st, 2005 at 9:47 pm

   Paul Farmer, of Partners in Health, who is the subject of the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracey Kidder, seems to me to be a spiritual heir to WL Garrison. Paul Farmer has made it his mission to provide high level health care to the destitute. And that means not just treating symptoms, but treating the conditions which cause poor health.

   He is like him in his resoluteness and absolute commitment in both words and deeds to his beliefs. Like WLG, he has been struck by the fundamental unfairness of a world which has benefited some at the expense of others. Like WLG, he is not content with half measures.

   I think their causes are similar in that both have embraced issues which may have been looked at with a measure of complacency or resignation or indifference, and both embrace solutions which seem to be radical even to those who recognized the injustice.

9. JonGarfunkel Says:
   September 1st, 2005 at 8:13 pm

   Glad we came to agreement on Nader. Paul Farmer is another good nomination. I wonder why these folks aren’t associated with a passioned publication as WLG was? Question for another time.

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