[Part I is here.]

Second Panel: Which Century are We in?

The middle panel was good, although much of the discussion revolved around the kind of sport’s thinking that Charles had deplored in his opening comments. It does not help to think in terms of liberal, conservative, right, left, the two teams that you try to “balance” in order to be “fair” or “objective.” And yet the panel had been stacked to give us those 20th century notions center stage, especially with David Corn and John Podhoretz (author of Bush Country : How George W. Bush Became the First Great Leader of the 21st Century---While Driving Liberals Insane) who started going at each other before we even heard from Claudia Rosett. Much reworking of the old debates about objectivity and facts vs. opinion and partisanship, about the difference between gumshoeing (what the best of the MSM claims to do – gathering facts) and thumbsucking (what the worst of the blogosphere thrives on – ruminating narcissism). Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club illustrated the sterling quality of the best bloggers, ferociously smart, modest of demeanor, thinking about the question he’s been asked, speaking in paragraphs.

He explored what it is that makes information as accurate as we can shape it, how we pursue theories (I’d prefer to call them “working hypotheses” – like, is the first panel an intentional joke?) and see how they firm up over time as we take in more data (after five minutes, apparently not), how we need to think about what would have to be true in order for what we (or someone else) think has happened to also be true (someone thought this would be a great way to show OSM’s broad spectrum of interests, and managed to convince the board). Listening to Richard was in some ways like revisiting the very exploration of thinking about reason and reality-testing in the 16th and 17th centuries, that made the West an open society, the place where both modern academia and modern science were born after the advent of printing.

The discussion ended with an observation on the difference in our idea of what’s going on in Iraq that we get from bloggers there and from the MSM here, prompting Podhoretz to make the classic “right-wing” argument that we really won the Tet offensive, and that the MSM (thank you uncle Walt), took it away by presenting it as a catastrophe, an observation that Austin Bay affirmed later that afternoon. But to bring this argument up to speed, John took it a step further, proffered the interesting analogous argument that, had there been bloggers in Vietnam, we would have won the war. Interesting, perhaps going too far. Worth a thought, an exploration.
"Oh yeah,” responds Corn in classic “left-wing” style, “well what about Latin America!”

“Oh yeah,” says Podhoretz, “well what about Irving Stone!”

And with a crescendo into the puerile arguments that have produced our current state of self-ghettoization, the panel came to an end with a promise to look further into these matters. (I hope OSM follows up on this one.)

At lunch we talked about the morning sessions, and I remarked about how it would be nice to know the statistics about who was following the webcast, and be able to trace what I suspected – looking at the members of the audience “drop out” – was a precipitous drop-off as the first panel went on. “It was webcast?” one of our table companions gasped, blushing bright red. Ouch.

[Part 3 is here.]