Stop it. (Dennis)

Perhaps the most distasteful thing opinion on the internets is the endless original opinion competition that generates genuinely asinine thoughts in record time.

Example A is the evolving assessment of Hillary's speech last night. Last night, everyone who watched the speech though it was a great speech under any circumstance and incredibly gracious speech given the rancorous campaign that preceded it. As morning came, people on Internet opinion factories, like Slate, thought it was a very good speech, but, left out some things, like the fact that Obama was "ready to be president." Nevermind that she basically said that fate of Western Civilization depended on his being elected. Now, as I sat down to watch Bill Clinton's speech tonight, it had become conventional wisdom that Hillary had somehow left something out, and Bill needed to fill that void. This was a notion which, a mere 24 hours ago, was dismissed as a ridiculous McCain talking point.

You can't tell me honestly that you saw Hillary's speech last night, and detected an actual opening, so why say it, if you aren't a Republican hack? It's because there's this annoying strain of intellectual masturbation from people hired to write online. For some, truth doesn't matter as much as having something different out there, no matter how much sense it makes. I suspect this has always existed, but with millions of opinions out there acessible via the internet, conventional wisdom now devolves more quickly into nonsense. It turns on its head the idea that greater accessiblity to ideas and information make us more informed.