I’m Joseph Rago and I’d like to personally thank you for choosing the Joseph Rago Pro Journalist Institute……

Rago is boot-licking the MSM to beat the band. There must be a stronger motive than wanting to be heard, but his poorly chosen words prove Hewitt’s point that he lacks experience, or expertise, or much of anything else other than an opinion.

:-)

snarky is the new sarcasm.

I wonder if this clown had anything to do with the new makeover of the WSJ? One of the new features of the new print edition of the WSJ is that they will be doing more “interpretative analysis” [translation: editorializing] in their news articles.

One would expect a 23 year old to understand, if not embrace, the new direction in media. The Internet has returned to “marketplace of ideas” to the people, where individuals who have not been anointed by a publisher [translation: gatekeeper of information] to tell the people WHAT to think.

We, all of us who comment here, or run a blog, participate in the old Usenet newsgroups, chat rooms, or whatever, ALL of us have managed to destroy the old top-down news management model. How so? Because the Internet is a TWO WAY communications paradigm, where the “consumer” gets to have his say, too.

For the first time (I think I’m right on this) since the Classical Athenian agora, has the marketplace of ideas become open to all to contribute.

What Rago ought to understand, but apparently does not, is that the more people like us participate, the QUICKER the path to the truth is found, and the stronger our Republic becomes.

Yes, there will be idiots and liars. There will be wackjobs and tinfoil hat wearers, hate mongers, and conspiracy spouters. And, not doubt, there will be spin-job artists all working to get their version of “The Truth” out there. But that’s alright, too. The Internet gives us ALL freedom of speech.

The people who fall for the stupidity end up marginalizing themselves. And their ideas fall by the wayside.

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a TRUE marketplace of ideas, where the strongest ideas — the ones closest to reality and carrying the most common sense — will win in the end.

For every “fecal matter for brains” like John Connor, James Brolin and Charlie Sheen, there is a Penn and Teller or Popular Mechanics exposing them as the stupid fools they really are. For every BDS virus carrier posting in DU or DKOS, there are hundreds who read their nonsense and get turned off. And if you doubt this, take a closer look at WHO the “regular” participants are. What I see is not an “expansion” of their point of view or ideas, but a SHRINKING of viewpoints and a contraction of intelligence in what they write. DU, is, IMHO, little more than a mutual masturbation society made up of intellectual dilettantes who are at the lower end of the intellectual bell-curve.

Rago, a child of the Internet era, doesn’t have a clue. He’s a 23-year old dinosaur who has seen the flash of the extinction meteor, but has no idea what it means.

TRV will love this one:Print This: Your Blast Into the Blogosphere Insults Your Readers
Uh oh. Now you’ve done it. In one fell swoop Joseph Rago has managed to
insult a large swath of your readership for whom the Journal was the
one remaining……

Could get past Rago

Who could know

Where he might go?

I know it sucks, but it’s damn sure better’n Rosie’s Rants.

My mom still watches Brian Williams on the Nightly News. (Our Local NBC affiliate has the best local news in the state, so I usually watch it, but then the NBC Nightly News with “Captain Hyperbole” come on afterwards.

How can people live their daily lives without knowing that “_____ is the worst to ever happen since the last time ____ happened.”

(Go ahead, take a listen to him, he uses the same template for EVERY story. and it drives me nuts…. sure, no reason there why the MSM should be abandoned for blogs.)

He’s only assistant features editor.

Not any more – his official title is now Hugh Hewitt’s B*tch. He worked hard for it, too.

The way that this guy writes, if he can ever get over himself, he just might have potential. Maybe.

From what little I’ve seen, that’s a pretty huge “if”.

It’s a false arrogance.

I think he wasn’t paying enough attention during his high school self esteem workshops. A person who is really confident in his own abilities doesn’t need to pull every fifth word of his article out of the thesaurus in hopes of proving he’s the next Bill Buckley.

From what little I’ve seen, that’s a pretty huge “if”.

Joseph Rago who?

.

Proofread, you dumb hillbilly.

BAH!

And for my part, I will come clean and admit to having missed Katie, Barbara, Dan, Anderson, Maureen…

Okay, I’ll come clean too.

My Aunt Katie was the first right wing religious zealot that I knew. She scared the crap outta me… And I went to Catholic School for 8 years so that’s saying something.

Barbara… The biker chic that I dated about 16 years ago who is now married to the biker dude that she left me for… (I still get email from her ;)

Dan… Or, Da da dan as we called him. He stuttered and I’m now ashamed of teasing him.

Anderson… Ahhh Pamela, you were but a thought and a dream to me.

Maureen. I saw her first, but after I took her out on one date, my best friend asked her to marry him. And she accepted and they are living reasonably happy ever after.

Boy do I feel better. Let’s do this again sometime.

Meanwhile back at the ranch… There is not substitute for the open forum of the web. Blogs are both good and bad but the best will one day replace the MSM completely…

Hot Air rocks and the MSM sucks.

Say good night Gracie.

Last I checked, 23 is adult age, so let him take his lumps. I think what rubbed people the wrong way was the sneering condescension. He was way over the top.

JammieWearingFool on December 29, 2006 at 4:31 PM

Ditto. It’s called “Welcome to the real world, Mr. Rago.”

Rago sounds too immature to handle the job of editor.

Or blogger. :-)