Jealousy

When I was a student at The Bennington Writing Seminars, I had a professor named George Packer. He was, for the most part, kind and wise. His critiques of my writing were gentle, yet helpful. He encouraged me to become the best writer I could be, and while I am not there yet, I am on the path in part, because of George.

At the end of my final semester in grad school, I got my evaluation from George and it said something about how I was a good writer and had shown progress, but perhaps I was too young to be in the program in the first place. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but at the time, I cried and he changed the final evaluation to not say anything about his belief that I was just a little kid who didn't belong in a graduate writing program. While I am certain that he didn't mean to destroy me the night before graduation, that is pretty much the impact he had.

It has been about a year and a half since graduation, and I thought I had forgiven George Packer. I had mainly good thoughts about him on the rare occasions I thought about him, usually while writing or thinking about reporting. But last week my copy of Mother Jones came in the mail and his name was on the cover next to a headline about blogs: The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged. Sensing that this article was going to say something negative about blogging, an activity I have been participating in more and more, I cringed slightly. I also felt an unexpected twinge of the green monster(aaak I can't believe I just used that cliche) of jealousy. So, I waited a day to read the article and then plopped on my couch one evening and opened the magazine in hopes of liking the article. But I didn't. It wasn't even that it was so good I was jealous. It just wasn't very good. In November, George wrote an amazing article about Iraq for the New Yorker that any writer would be awed by...But this Mother Jones story about blogging was really disappointing.

While it wasn't terrible, it just didn't say anything terribly new. Everyone knows that blogging can be very insulated and is often very introspective. Even political blogs are often about riding on the campaign bus, or some other less interesting event than going door to door or making a campaign stop. And certainly being in Iowa during the primaries would be better than reading about the primaries on political blogs, but I would argue that being there would be better than reading about the primaries in the New Yorker as well. A blogger who went to Iowa is definitely more qualified to then blog about Iowa, but there is nothing about the nature of blogging that makes blogging and good reportage mutually exclusive.

It seemed to me that George was trying his best to write about something happening in pop culture and political culture right now, but he couldn't really diss blogs because he likes them. I don't think the people at Wonkette are aspiring to win a Pulitzer... It's a different genre, with a different intent and that made George's point unnecessary, invalid even. The goal of a political blog is usually not to be like the Washington Post. But if that were the goal, I have no doubt that some of the more astute bloggers could pull it off.

Whatever the case, I will continue to be a fan of my friend George... And it was nice to see that he is human and not everything he puts on paper (or in national magazines) is awe-inspiring.