"Which, Being Believed, Was, Whether It Was or Not"

Special to FreeRepublic ^ | 21 February 2006 | John Armor (Congressman Billybob)

[Congressman Billybob]

This article is a two-fer. It pillories the MSM and praises FR. Can't get any better than that.

John / Billybob

[dirtboy]

Good article.

rest of the MSM have totally ignored this essential information, available in the blogosphere.

Trudy Rubin at the Philly Inquirer did write a very good column on the cartoon subject that mentioned the bogus cartoons. But she's about the only one I've seen in the MSM that did so.

[TChris]

Nice article...except for calling FR a blog. It isn't. Free Republic is a forum. The two are distinctly different things, just as web pages and email are two different things. Sometimes, a web form will be called "email", when it really isn't.

A blog is an online diary, with the express purpose of displaying the entries of a single author.

A forum, on the other hand, is specifically for posting from multiple users, organized by a thread topic, and encouraging discussion.

The two terms are misused enough that their meanings are pretty blurry to most. But there is a difference.

[bvw]

Great essay. Good lead-in.

[Bahbah]

I LOVE it. A home run Congressman.

[Congressman Billybob]

Yes, I know well the difference between a blog and a forum. I deeply appreciate the fact that FR is a forum. But, as you note, in the public mind the two words tend to merge, regardless of the accuracy of that. And FR IS an essential part of the blogosphere.

John / Billybob

[Billthedrill]

Better to be overlooked, to be underestimated. These games aren't being played by the amateurs who attempt to chronicle them, and the results are for keeps.

[FreedomSurge]

I thought you had decided not to run.

[marron]

The truth is that most of the Muslim leaders are barbarians, and most of their active followers are fools.

I just thought it bore repeating.

And, as far as FR is concerned, it is a blog. Its my blog.

cheers

[caveat emptor]

A blog is an online diary, with the express purpose of displaying the entries of a single author.

And Powerline??

[pipecorp]

misunderestimated..heh heh. ;^)

[Jack Black]

FR is not a blog, and predates blogs by a decade. It's something else. An information exchange? Blogs have one or several authors, whose personality and indosyncratic opinions tend to drive the content of the blog. FR has tens or hundreds of thousands of authors. Blogs usally have at most one or two postings a day. FR has thousands.

I don't think leaving FR out of the blogoshphere review is wrong, unless the DUmmies are there.

Even then Dummie Underground and Free Republic are not blogs, IMHO.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Here’s a suggestion for the American press. These words of Faulkner should be carved in wood above the podium at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., as a reminder that when almost all of the press universally report a fact as true, it may nonetheless be a lie:

“Which, being believed, was, whether it was or not....”

Not only do they know this, John, they depend on it.

[heleny]

its readers know that the Shuttle Challenger was burning up in the atmosphere and trailing debris as it crossed the coast of California, while the mainstream media were still sitting on their heels, waiting

Thanks for writing and posting this essay. Just a small correction: you meant Columbia (which disintegrated February 1, 2003), not Challenger (which disintegrated January 28, 1986)

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Even then Dummie Underground and Free Republic are not blogs, IMHO.

Definitions change over time.

..we are the Blog....resistance is futile..

[Miss Marple]

...invited to verify and confirm or falsify.

John, this isn't the word you want in an otherwise excellent column. "Falsify" means to make a forgery, to make falese records.

What you want to say is that readers are invited to disprove.

[Congressman Billybob]

I decided not to run in 2004. In 2006 the stars are properly aligned, and I AM running, now.

John / Billybob

[Congressman Billybob]

Thank you. I Googled "shuttle disaster" but picked up the wrong one. Your correction has been sent to all the editors who publish my columns.

Cordially,
\
John / Billybob

[Congressman Billybob]

Good evening, my friend,

In the law, "falsify" is used in the sense I used it.

John / Billybob

[willyboyishere]

I looked forward to this article when I saw it on the cover of New York last week, as I took it out of the mailbox. Finally got around to it reading it last night while taking a bath. Wow, was I disappointed.....not just because of the obvious bias, but somehow because at the end I felt I knew less than I knew before. Maybe someone should introduce him to PEACE MOONBEAM,and countless other blogs that I have been referred to here on the endlessly proliferating pages of FR.