Take a pill or something

This column by William Powers (link courtesy Romenesko) really struck a chord with me. The author complains about the volume and style of what passes for discourse among the chattering classes.

All media ideologues have one thing in common: anger. Scratch a real ideologue, left or right, and invariably what you find is a person who is working out some ancient vendetta against a parent, a sibling, a school, a company or some social group that rejected them and made them feel small. The anger became a passion, and passion can produce compelling, lucrative media content. But should angry people own the landscape? American radio is a wasteland of niche-driven music programming, frat-boy humor and ideology-driven talk.

Thank God somebody said that. I can't stand to listen for one single minute to those over-amped opinionated loudmouths -- I don't care which side they're on. You can't convince people of anything while you're arguing with them -- unless they already agree with you. The fatal flaw of Bowling for Columbine was the way Michael Moore's anger made him less, not more, articulate. You think you're being really articulate and powerful when you blow your stack, but actually you're just jacking off. It feels good, but it doesn't convince anybody.