Karen Long at the Cleveland Plain Dealer casts the Battle over Books as one between hopelessly retro artistes, who cling pathetically to the past, and the techno-philistines who would mash up the entire Western literary canon:

[John Updike] lauded booksellers as “the salt of the book world,” an echo of the heartfelt way Larry McMurtry used the global stage of the Academy Awards to praise the embattled bookshop.

“Book readers and writers are approaching the position of hermits,” Updike said, “grouches refusing to come out to play in the electronic sunshine.” …

Kelly wants all texts to be “linked, manipulated, annotated, tagged, highlighted, bookmarked, translated, enlivened by other media and sewn together into the universal library.” …

[Whereas Chris Anderson] played pied piper for what he sees as a new economy of abundance, courtesy of cyberspace and the markets unleashed by the unlimited shelf-space and digital distribution made possible by the Web.

This adds heat but no light to the subject introduced into the blogosphere by Jeff Jarvis.

Could there be any more proof that the book is dead than this trend to anthologize and place between hard covers the Collected Thoughts of Nobodies on Nothing of Consequence?

This new kind of anthology assembles first-person confessional essays, rather than, say, discussions of sanitation and personal hygiene in the Middle Ages, and is readily distinguished by an annoyingly cute title and a numeral specifying the number of writers who bare their souls on a range of intimate topics: “Maybe Baby: 28 Writers Tell the Truth About Skepticism, Infertility, Baby Lust, Childlessness, Ambivalence and How They Made the Biggest Decision of Their Lives”; “Roar Softly and Carry a Great Lipstick: 28 Women Writers on Life, Sex and Survival”; “Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race and Themselves.”

Any celebrity worth his/her salt knows it’s not a good idea to diss the sweaty adoring mob, but apparently the Dixie Chicks know better. In the New York Times, Kelefa Sanneh sniffs out the careerist angle of the Chicks’ dissing of their fans:

Instead of fighting for their old fans, the Dixie Chicks seem to be dismissing them.

On “60 Minutes” Ms. Maguire told Steve Kroft that their concerts weren’t typical country concerts. “When I looked out in the audience, I didn’t see rednecks,” she said. (Did her lip curl slightly as she pronounced the r-word?) “I saw a more progressive crowd.”

And in a Time magazine cover story she said the group would rather have “a smaller following of really cool people who get it,” as opposed to “people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith.” …Perhaps there’s a difference between this attitude and simple snobbery, but you can’t blame country fans if they don’t much feel like splitting hairs.

And Sanneh points to the troubling culture-war consequences of the Dixie Chicks’ image makeover [emphasis mine]:

The Nashville establishment is not politically monolithic. The most depressing thing about this whole episode is the way the Dixie Chicks have conflated politics and culture, Bush supporters and “rednecks.” The unintended implication is that only sophisticated city folk oppose the war in Iraq, and only “rednecks” support the president.

Blech.

Of course, the Dixie Chicks may be trying to get in with the Cool Kids just as the Cool Kids start to grate on our nerves:

In a telephone interview before [a Bruce Springsteen] concert, Tamara Conniff, executive editor and associate publisher of Billboard magazine, said, “People will sort of endure Bruce’s politics because they just love the music.”

Bruce, we hardly knew ye:

TigerHawk links to a report from the AP about Alaa, the Egyptian blogger I wrote about here. The Sandmonkey is quoted—under his name—and the AP provides a link to his blog, which is great. I’ve recommended it before. Give it a try.

Be forewarned: The writer of this blog is an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled sandmonkey. If this is your cup of tea, please enjoy your stay here. If not, please sod off.

In its report, the AP explains that Alaa’s blog is an aggregator of sorts for 1,000 Egyptian blogs [!].There’s also a very important point about the role of the Internet in societies that live under political repression:

As in other Mideast nations where the press is tightly controlled, middle-class Egyptians have found an outlet on the Internet to spout on politics, culture and daily life — often in the sort of raucous language that newspapers won’t print. Internet cafes have become common.

Interestingly, the Egyptian bloggers see themselves as an alternative not just to their own government-controlled media but also to Al Jazeera and the BBC.

“Instead of opening sites like Al-Jazeera or the BBC, we open Manalaa’s blog to see what’s going on,” said Abdel-Fattah, whose boyfriend, Ahmed El-Droubi, was arrested with Alaa.

Glenn “InstaPundit” Reynolds, who’s written about Alaa, also makes a critical observation [emphasis mine]:

“He’s certainly the most famous blogger in Egypt and arguably the best known reformer there now,” Reynolds told The Associated Press. “When you suppress dissent, even minor voices become incredibly powerful.” ***

Long live the free blogosphere!
—————–

***I was trying to make a related point here, when I talked about how the American MSM misinterpreted the significance of the “heckler” who ruined the Rose Garden meeting between the Chinese president and our beloved leader. By raising her voice in protest, that woman gave hope to all those Chinese who are unable to speak out in their own behalf in China, where the press is controlled by the state.

In an atmosphere of political repression, even one voice that dares to speak the truth has great power. Long live the blogosphere, and Internet freedom.