The impact of the internet on political movements

Frank Rich of the New York Times is writing on politically-significant cluelessness when it comes to understanding the impact of blogging, the internet and grass-roots movements in the political campaigns this year. How does this cluelessness manifest itself among mainstream media in general and Washington media more particularly?

First, it takes the form of cultural backwardness. The Washington press corps--along with those it interviews most--are an elite lagging in Net time:

In Washington, the Internet is still seen mainly as a high-velocity disseminator of gossip (Drudge) and rabidly partisan sharpshooting by self-publishing excoriators of the left and right. When used by campaigns, the Internet becomes a synonym for "the young," "geeks," "small contributors" and "upper middle class," as if it were an eccentric electronic cousin to direct-mail fund-raising run by the acne-prone members of a suburban high school's computer club

Second, the cluelessness is tonal, a hearing and speech problem, which causes journalists to dismiss what they have not struggled to understand, and then to advertise that lack of effort. Here things become comic.

The condescending reaction to the Dean insurgency by television's political correspondents can be reminiscent of that hilarious party scene in the movie "Singin' in the Rain," where Hollywood's silent-era elite greets the advent of talkies with dismissive bafflement. "The Internet has yet to mature as a political tool," intoned Carl Cameron of Fox News last summer as he reported that the runner-up group to Dean supporters on the meetup.com site was witches.

There's more. Read the whole thing.