If Only

February 26, 2005

Last December, Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, wrote a particularly foolish editorial in the LA Times. (He was president-elect back then and is still president-elect. Just how long between the election and the inauguration?) He was worried that letting people get information in books more easily through Google would hurt serious research. (Honest, that is his argument.) I blogged about it then.

In fact, Gorman received a lot of criticism from blogs. (There is, alas, no indication he ever read Pajama Guy's take.) So much that he retreated to the safety of the Library Journal to write about his cruel treatment.

He appears to have been unnerved by his confrontation with the blogosphere. Yet, somehow, I doubt any cheap shots he received were worse than Gorman's own clueless arrogance:

"Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs."

Is it too late to make this guy the president-unelect?