Blogging about blogging about blogging: Dillow versus Lewis
You’ve heard of blogging about blogging haven’t you? Well, this is the next frontier; blogging about blogging about blogging.
The funniest Tweeter on the political twittersphere, one Helen Lewis, has had a spat with the best political economist on the blogosphere, one Chris Dillow – and I’ve spent the last 8 minutes acquainting myself with their falling out (the next 8 writing this).
Basically, Dillow thinks that economics can explain more than just numbers (perhaps even EVERYTHING) and Lewis is an example of a writer who explains a great many things without necessary recourse to economics.
This style of Lewis’, for example, has been reduced to what Dillow has called “whining” and “complaining”.
So perhaps this is an academic argument. Lewis has one way of making her case (let’s call this the first principles ethical road to egalitarianism) and Dillow his (the first principles economic road to egalitarianism), and Dillow has taken exception with it.
But I think this debate has wider ramifications. Is it to do with what blogging can be used for?
For the pessimists, blogging is a place where people can sound off about nonsense. For optimists blogging can replace or at least challenge mainstream writing and in effect is a very noble thing indeed.
For that reason blogging about blogging might be seen as crass or worse can set back blogging to a thing that, doesn’t challenge the mainstream, but proves its ultimate worth.
Dillow, I think, sees Lewis’ style as something characterised by this. Which might well be fair. Might be. But there is, I feel, still worth in it.
In the piece that followed by Lewis, responding to Dillow, she made light of the fact that people enjoy the things she writes about. This is enough for me. It might not be seen as the most important writing ever (blogging about Twitter or, indeed, blogging), but there is certainly worth in it.
So a debate that might well be seen by some as an economist looking down his nose at a blogger about blogging, actually turns into a debate about whether we should bother to write about seemingly mundane things. I say we should.
And my appreciation for both writers stays in tact!!
Hi.
Thanks for those kind words.
I don’t think economics can explain everything – though I do strongly believe that it has vastly more to offer the left than generally appreciated. And I wasn’t attacking Helen in general. My point was what I considered the mundane one, of expressing a personal taste that lefties should do more than point out that some people are sickos; I’ve complained in a different context (about critics of the left’s flirtation with Islamism) that people spend too much time arguing with village idiots.
I think one source of misunderstanding between us concerns the role of writing. Should it be mainly a campaigning role, or should it suggest points of interest and alert people to new facts and thinking? I favour the latter, but very many others favour the former; this is one reason why there’s no place for me in the mainstream media.
Hi Chris
So I’m almost on the money by saying it’s blogging style that is at issue here, not necessarily that you’re a big old sexist (which was probably tongue in cheek on your part. Probably).
And your put down of mainstream media there puts it all into context – blogging has the capacity, at a local level, to be more informative and a signpost for new ways of thinking for and by people who really think it. But it hasn’t always gone this way.
Perhaps Lewis is an entryist, taking down blogging from the inside. She is after all a mainstream journalist too. She’s keeping blogging in the gutter.
Dillow: “people spend too much time arguing with village idiots.” It’s possibly also true that people spend too much time arguing *about* ‘village idiots’ as well (Twitter is both medium and culprit in this respect)?
Hi
I wouldn’t say Helen is keeping blogging in the gutter at all: I’m not on her case.
I’m not even saying what bloggers should and shouldn’t do – each to their own.
My point is that – for various reasons – a lot of things that should get said don’t get said in the MSM or even in many blogs; I’m thinking here of exactly the type of research I cited in that post.
What I try to do in my blog is to say what others aren’t saying.
Which is clearly what stands you out. Though, if I were to offer something by way of criticism, we can surely understand why feminists won’t be arguing for pro-choice on the grounds you give in your first example any time soon. Maybe because comment on blogs and the MSM doesn’t lend itself well to the sort of analysis that came about that figure, but also because people tend to develop ethical/sociological arguments, where economic arguments like that one seem slightly lacking in real world nuance.
Thanks for those kind words. I think you’re right. But “slightly lacking in real world nuance” somehow reminded be of something the big fella said: “all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm
Crikey that’s astonishingly similar. I’m very proud of that! Of course that means that the economic argument and the ethical/sociological arguments reach one and the same conclusion, but in order to salvage the market worth of both they must appear different – to avoid superfluity.