The End of Punditry

January 26, 2007 RSS Feed Print

The Internet has brought us so many ambrosial capabilities: online access to global information and research, online shopping, online business dealings, online dating. The list expands daily. But one of high tech's less ambrosial characteristics is the Internet's plethora of self-appointed pundits. Anyone with a computer and broadband may now make his or her thoughts available to a global audience.

Some of those folks, let's be honest, have very little new, interesting, or enlightening to say. On the downside, they ratchet up anger levels in our already divided culture.

I came across this latest example, which I share herewith. It's entitled "Women Are Not Oppressed."

The author, one Bernard Chapin, takes on a column that ran in December in the Baltimore Sun, written by teacher Jennie Dombowski, whose male and female students told her feminism is over and women no longer have need of a "women's movement."

While I take issue with some of her claims, she posed an interesting set of questions by contrasting her own take on women's rights with those of members of the successor generation. The contrast is worth considering.

More in my next blog.

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Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.

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