Applebaum vs. Baker

Over on The New Republic's website Anne Applebaum has a forceful dismissal of Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke, a book of selectively chosen vignettes and quotes meant to show that World War II wasn't worth fighting. I've not read the book, but it seems truly preposterous, both in concept and structure. Everything I'd say about it, Applebaum already has, so check her article out.

Applebaum attributes the book to the same impatient and anti-intellectual zeitgeist that has birthed wikipedia and the blogosphere. She has the following to say about blogs:

It is true that there are many excellent, well-educated bloggers, whose contributions to public debates are invaluable, and who have served to prod the establishment institutions of many professions to try harder. At the same time, there are also many bloggers who, without any knowledge or expertise whatsoever, believe their opinions must by definition surpass those found in the "mainstream media, " or the "conventional histories," simply because they are self-appointed "critics," whether right-wing, left-wing, or off the charts.

I have no problem with that. In today's Washington Post, Howard Kurtz also expresses disappointment over the changes internet newsdom is wreaking on his newspaper. It's clearly a shame that someone like Tom Ricks, whose coverage of the Iraq War was as important as any journalist's, was bought out, but if the end result of the reorganization of the newspaper industry is that the Post no longer remains a place that is able to "support a staff that can hold public officials accountable across the region and still cover every Nationals game," I don't think that's the end of the world. I just hope they realize that the former is the essential function of a newspaper. After all, I can watch the Nationals on television and draw my own conclusions; they may be less expert than Wilbon's, but that's not a tragedy. But if I don't have access to Ricks or someone like him, I can't understand issues that are far more important.