Ban the Blog!

Over at a certain place that most of us follow like crack whores, there’s been an interesting discussion in the comments of this post about a Guardian columnist and alleged vicar of Putney, Fr. Giles Fraser .

The cause of the trouble seems to have something to do with the pernicious medium of blogging, a long cherished concern of mine that Ruth Gledhill of The Timesran with after a Viagravillain dared call her a ”an instrument of evil”.

Of course a more cynical man than I can’t help thinking that the Rev. Guardian only picked this topic up because he was running a little pressed for time, and toadying to a fellow journalist seemed a quick way of finding a few hundreds word, but that is not correct. Nor is there any truth behind theories that ensuring one continues to receive good press in the The Times plays an important part achieving those aspirations involving the colour purple but not Whoopi Goldberg.

No, the Rev. Guardian is quite correct; the world of blogging is indeed a terrible place, where anyone with access to a computer can ridicule and expose the pompous, hypocritical and power-hungry for what they are. Unlike the physical world, where people express themselves with fists, knives and the wonderfully expressive product range offered by British Aerospace, the blogosphere involves people fighting with words, ideas, and (in the case of the occasional Viagravillain), the barely-coherent products of a spittle-flecked keyboard.

What’s more, blogging entirely by-passes the pockets of such noble pillars of society as Ruth Gledhill’s boss, enabling people to say anything they want regardless of who they happen to not be afraid to laugh at. Much as I love little David Virtue, I’ll be the first to say not even he reaches the delightful moral pinnacles of the man Ruth is actively helping to make richer, and if instead of foolishly reading and writing blogs more people spent their time viewing his newspapers, magazines and television programs, and absorbing the informative advertisements these are proud to carry for a not insubstantial fee, there can be no doubt the world would be a much better place. Or at least it would be for Ruth’s boss.

The whole blog thing should be shut down immediately. All of it. This business of letting people speak for themselves, airing the “ideas” normally only expressed in the privacy of their ever-diminishing congregations, is disgraceful. Opinions should be restricted to those who can be trusted to never say anything too challenging. Everyone else should just shut up and listen. Perhaps if they behave themselves especially well they might also be given the privilege of writing important newspaper columns that never question the morality of those actually running our world.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.