On the Daily Show earlier this week, Arianna Huffington tried to convince Jon Stewart that he should put his thoughts into a blog for her news and opinion site, The Huffington Post.
Stewart responded by noting that “when I have thoughts, I put them on the little screen in the living room”.
Huffington then argued that he likely had “more thoughts than what you use on the show”.
To which Jon came back with probably the best reason I’ve heard for performers (or anyone else) NOT blogging.
Why should I give people the dreck? Shouldn’t I try to focus it and make it as good as I can… because my other thoughts, there’s a reason I haven’t put them on the show.
Huffington was there hawking a “guide to blogging” book which sounds like recycled versions of advice you can find all over the web for far less than fifteen bucks.
Interesting. I’ve been reading posts on both sides – the need to get content on your blog, because that’s how you make it sticky and get readers…. and then the other side, the slow blogging movement where you post less but with more long detailed posts.
I’m a fair-weather fan of Stewart (and Colbert)…most of the time I’d just prefer to get tweets of the headlines, go find the articles about things I find interesting, and I’ll see the humor in it by myself, but Stewart does sometimes (accidentally?) get things so insightfully correct that it leaves me in awe.
In Jon Stewart’s reply to Huffington, you’ve quoted him saying in part “… My other thoughts, there’s a reason I haven’t put them on the show.”
This makes me wonder if there isn’t a reason why education blogs are ignoring a current controversial news story. A social studies teacher in White Plains, N.Y. was teacing a class of 7th graders about American slavery. To demonstrate conditions aboard slave ships coming to America, she bound the hands and feet of two black girls with duct tape and instructed them to crawl. It has created quite a controversy.
But no posts or comments can I find in the top education and teacher blogs. What’s up with that? Why doesn’t anyone want to talk about it? Is it the racism? Perhaps it’s not wanting to contribute to the firing of a teacher.
I have written about it on my blog Ethic Soup and would very much like some comments from educators. To read the article, go to:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/2008/12/teachers-ethics-lesson-dont-bind-black-students-to-teach-slavery.html#more
Sharon McEachern
Sharon: education blogs are not a monolith, all of them writing about the same pieces of the huge category at the same time. I have no idea why none of the edubloggers I read wrote about this particular incident but I’m more than happy to point people to your discussion of it.