| brucekluger.com |
USA Today, August 30, 2006 Lieberman, 'Snakes' and the seductive mythology of the blogosphere By Bruce Kluger If ever America needed a wake-up call about the mythology of blogging, we got it this month. On Aug. 8, Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont defeated U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary, a triumph widely credited to the rah-rah racket produced by pro-Lamont armies stationed along the Internet. Indeed, the bloggers had scored big. They had helped vault a local politician to national prominence, and cemented the Iraq war as Issue Number One in the congressional elections. Not a bad day. But their victory was short-lived. Even before the primary, Lieberman announced that, should he lose, he'd still run in November as an independent. This electoral chutzpah effectively rope-a-doped the bloggers and recharged the senator's fabled Joe-mentum. Lieberman's still the man to beat in the general election. If this wasn't enough to drain the effervescence from the blogger bubbly, America's noisy Web wags were dealt an even more sobering blow 10 days later when Snakes on a Plane opened nationwide to a decidedly flat $15.3 million box office Before its premiere, Snakes had been the latest blogger darling, as swarms of online film geeks prematurely crowned it the summer's big sleeper. This hyperventilating fan base even convinced Snakes' distributor, New Line Cinema, to up the movie's rating to R, to ensure a gorier, more venomous snake fest. But all that clapping and yapping couldn't put enough American fannies in the seats. Ticket sales for Snakes' debut barely topped those of Talladega Nights, which was already in its third week. Although Connecticut and Hollywood are a continent apart, the two events speak volumes about the capriciousness of the blog culture. Lieberman's boomerang reminds us that voters represent a meager percentage of the total populace—and that bloggers are an even tinier subset of that group. Consequently, what appears to be a coast-to-coast juggernaut on a 17-inch monitor is, in the real world, simply an elaborate PC-to-PC chain letter— enthusiastic for sure, but not necessarily the national mindset. "There isn't much point in detailing the chest thumping of the various blognut extremists," wrote Time's Joe Klein in his analysis of the Lamont victory. "Their reach is minuscule." For those who think Klein is underestimating the power of the blog, I have four words: Howard Dean for President. But it is the underwhelming response to Snakes that reveals the real peril in relying on bloggers to take the nation's pulse. "There were a lot of inflated expectations on this picture, with the Internet buzz," New Line's David Tuckerman told The New York Times after Snakes' lukewarm bow. "But it basically performed like a normal horror movie." Tuckerman hits the problem squarely on its blogging noggin. Ever since the first smarty-pants posted his first unsolicited opinion on the Internet, Americans have become captivated by blog-o-mania—for good reason. For once, we own and operate our own public medium. Power to the people. Vox populi. Yadda-yadda. And yet, as the scrambling suits at Lamont headquarters and New Line Cinema now know, it's easy to be seduced by one's own hype, especially when that hype is preceded by a "www." Now it's time to play catch-up ball. Lamont's handlers will have to face a candidate who will surely try to have it both ways on the campaign trail, and New Line will have to sell a boatload of popcorn. That's the way the blog bounces. As an occasional blogger myself, I'm still wary of the phenomenon. On one hand, it can be liberating to log on and spout off, unencumbered by editorial oversight. On the other hand, as August 2006 clearly demonstrates, bloggers can just as easily get it wrong. That's worth remembering. The whole thing reminds me of child-rearing. As the parent of any toddler can tell you, the younger the child, the louder the screams for attention—and quite often, the degree of the crisis is in reverse proportion to the decibels of the bellows. To that end, it's important to remember that the blogosphere is still in its infancy, and like any kid, it needs to be watched very carefully.
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