Thanks, Jay

I greatly appreciate that Jay Rosen has opened up a new thread (see here) in place of the old one I discussed Monday. Jay also took time out to respond to an e-mail I sent him, and he explained that his lack of participation in the prior thread was largely related to practical difficulties of getting to an internet connection while on his family vacation. I suppose that sometimes bloggers are actually human after all.

While I still do not fully understand what was going on his mind while he was reading that thread, I thought of the following analogy: Perhaps he felt he had invited people over for drinks, and instead they came in, raided his refrigerator, ate all of his food, and then complained when he tried to kick them out of the house at midnight ("Hey -- you invited us over here!"). I don't know to what extent blog etiquette handles the issue of staying on-topic (mind you, I didn't perceive the comments as being very far off-topic, though Jay might have).

In any event, please see my comment in the new thread here. I am not cross-posting it here, as it is somewhat tied in with other comments over there, but I will post more about the topic in this space tomorrow.