A Philadelphia baseball commentator (Conlin) made some rather silly comments and various bloggers criticized him for that. As part of his reply, Conlin wrote the following:
"The only positive thing I can think of about Hitler's time on earth-I'm sure he would have eliminated all bloggers. In Colonial times, bloggers were called "Pamphleteers." They hung on street corners handing them out to passersby. Now, they hang out on electronic street corners, hoping somebody mouses on to their pretentious sites. Different medium, same MO. Shakespeare accidentally summed up the genre best with these words from a MacBeth soliloquy: ". . .a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. . ."
That really lit up the switchboard and one of the criticisms was that Conlin's approving comment about Hitler was antisemitic.
I think that is absurd. He said that there is just ONE good thing about Hitler. I would say that there were SEVERAL good things about Hitler: He virtually invented freeways, he pulled Germany out of the Depression etc. Yet, as a libertarian I see Nazism as the very antithesis of all that I stand for. But simplistic black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking I will leave to Leftists.
And can anybody who has ever bought a Volkswagen beetle (I have owned three) say that Hitler did nothing good? It was Hitler who commissioned the design and who first put it into production.
As for Conlin's comments about bloggers, it is just another example of how elitist old-media types cannot handle people answering back.
There is a big summary of the Conlin affair here
