The old paradigm is thinkers debating ideas on the pages of well read journals and magazines. The new paradigm is idiots writing letters to the editor which then get printed by idiots with J-school education. Sorry to be so harsh, but having witnessed the recent debates here on historical ideas (Da Vinci Code again) I just don't see it.
I probably haven't thought long enough before responding to your post, but I must defy the convention and at least applaud your courage...you are one of the leaders of the unconventional opinion. There is no doubt that the lack of accountability makes for a rude venue...but the cream of ideas and dialogue still rise to the top. And the trash sinks to the bottom of the heap.
The debates are certainly insane here. It is a raw journal of the jungle of ideas.
But as disgusting as it is...it is the "cinema verite" of our time.
Can it be so bad? Genius mets idiocy...and is humiliated...but still alive!
FR is the Hyde Park Corner of the electric world. Freedom of speech has never had such immediate power.
Don't give up! You are one of the reasons that reason will defeat insanity.
Here the pain is felt in the ego. Courage and wisdom is always greater than ego...when ego is dead, they will remain.
IMHO
Sorry for such a silly response but I am watching "Braveheart" on TV and it always makes me voluble and, well, Scottish.
One of the great quotes from that interview, which I'm paraphrasing here, was Wolfe quoting Hegel, I think, saying that "one can't rise above the moral tone of the times." That one had me thinking for the following week, and then someone, who also read the interview used it as an excuse for their (I don't want to say "her" or "his, so let it be the ungrammatical "their") nasty behaviour. But one must try anyway, and Wolfe certainly does. This carries a price, needless to say, you are a snob and elitist, and get depressed seeing yourself surrounded by consumers of trash, with whom you're unable to communicate. ("Oh, it lonely at the top", sang Randy Newman.)
As for Tom Wolfe lacking heart, I agree, but that's what we have to settle for on this side of the intellectual spectrum. It occured to me that Wolfe was in a way forced into writing fiction, since his New Journalism non-fiction didn't take off, or rather, was hijacked by the likes of Hunter Thompson with their agendas and ideologies. Wolfe was, when he and Terry Southern invented New Journalism back in the early 60s, a participating observer, a heartless sceptic, if you will, a classic journalist with no agenda whatsoever. I used to know one like him, no new journalist, older than Wolfe, well known in his time, drank himself to death.