September 12, 2002:
Blogging is Internet folk art. Like other popular forms, that is, art forms invented by the people rather than some elite, it's a great grab-bag of the good, the bad, and the pointless. One day perhaps the best blogs will be displayed in the online version of the Smithsonian, in the same way that the best quilts are displayed in museums today, or the best folk music was eventually recorded.
What does "best" mean?
In a political reading, that would probably be "those which most closely imitate ruling class standards." In a more commonsensical reading - equally political - it might be "the ones with something to say." The blogs that say "I'm so bored, there's nothing on TV, I wish someone would call..." aren't likely to be considered collectible by posterity. Which is too bad, 'cause it's what they are, just as most folk songs suck and most quilts end up as dishrags.
The point is that real people strive to make art, just as elite minorities do. Every working-class person I've ever known tries to make something, somehow. Fixing their cars, crafting bookshelves, planting gardens, inventing recipes, writing letters, writing journals, making clay pots. In this context the elite are only elite because they enjoy differentially greater access to education, and to leisure time.
Stocky man, all muscle, a "fireplug" they would have called him. Overalls. A dark room. Lowers a welder's mask over his face. Sparks his torch. Blue-red jet of flame, and now you can see the setting: the inside of a two-car garage in a suburban street of one-story tract homes. Sparks shower: he's cutting coal-black strips of iron. What's he making? Ornamental sculpture for his home.
How do you feel being here? Unsafe. He's an aggressive man who once set the dogs on the pregnant neighbor lady. The empty beer cans are piling up, and he's got a jet of red-hot flame in his hand.
As elite culture cottons-on, where "elite culture" means culture trained in the history of literary forms, how will blogging be transformed?