Blogging kills: I read it in the New York Times

Jeneane is to be credited with bringing to our attention a new low of New York Timesian stupidity - so deep and dense a nadir as to make us wonder whether the author ever managed to escape the black hole he wrote himself into.

The illogic is patent: Two males who blogged have died -- one 60, one 50 years of age -- ergo blogging is dangerous to your health.

Passing over that in silence, I will say that Jeneane manages to make her own intelligent point despite having such material to work with. Blogging, she notes, has decayed -- and has done so, in fact, much as other initially exuberant new forms have been known to do. She's right, although that does not mean there are no longer interesting blogs, including Jeneane's. That's fodder for another post.

I'll settle for two quick observations:

1. The Times article stands at # 1 in the Times' own "Most Popular - Technology" list. Major surprise: blogging's bogus lethality caught the attention of, huzzzah, bloggers. Were the Times not sure its asinine pretext would get such attention, the article's tortured premise would have remained unexplored. For the moment blogging is, as Times readers know, the Paris Hilton of technology tags.

Which leads directly to:

2. Given the venality of the subject and its treatment, we might as well ask: is there any tastelessness to which the Times will not stoop? Marc Orchant is cited merely as a man who blogged and died. That he left a young family, devoted friends, and a community of devoted readers is beside the point. Let's work him into some tripe about blogging and watch the clicks tote up.

Which is why you'll find no link to the tripe herein.

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