Necessities...an ALN reader competition to come up with a neologism to replace "blog"—surely one of the least attractive terms to (dis)grace the language in quite a while. Sounds more like a condition related to flatulence than anything as consistently fascinating and engaging as this journal. (Where would MGM have gotten with BLOG GRATIA ARTIS, and would Hippocrates [and Goethe] have struck such a resonating chord with "Blog longa, vita brevis"? Now, really!)
Email to Terry Teachout, in ArtsJournal.com
A valid criticism, I suppose, but ultimately pointless.
The great genius of English is that it shamelessly swipes whatever words and phrases it finds useful -- wherever -- and chucks them into the lingua franca.
Q.E.D.
At the height of their fame, The Beatles could have barked out any nonsense word they liked, and it would have been spray-painted all over London by the next fortnight.
But John Lennon (or Jesus) never had the reach or the weight of the Internet, and what once was propagated by monks or Ed Sullivan is now flashing through networks at unimaginable speed.
Like caveat emptor or kindergarten: "Blog" is here to stay whether we like it or not. Sorry, Terry (or rather, his correspondent), but you're playing King Canute on this one.
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A belated thankyou to A Fearful Symmetry for linking to me.
The William Blake allusion caught my eye and his writing caught my ear.