Dec 12, 2008 Article by Alex Sharp | 0 comments

Black’s Insight On Bush’s Legacy Made More Poignant In The Internet Age

Living in Chicago, it would have been nearly impossible not to know the name Conrad Black. Even if I managed to miss his involvement with the Chicago Sun-Times, his internationally famous trial brought him into the local media’s attention. I read the news stories, most of them online, following the events of his trial in a diligent, though passing, manner, as a good mediaphile should. References were often made in these stories to his prolific body of writing. I was intrigued enough to search out and read some of these materials.

Whatever one’s opinion of the man’s business decisions, it is impossible to deny that Conrad Black is an impressively talented and accomplished writer. I now make a point to read his articles whenever he publishes. I would recommend that anyone who is confused about the current financial crisis gripping the United States read Ignorance and Upheaval. It is one of the most succinct descriptions I have read of how we ended up in this current economic quagmire.

In the course of following Mr. Black’s writing I came across one of his most recent essays, A ‘rather successful’ president with some serious achievements under his belt. In the piece Mr. Black does an excellent job of laying out the merits of our current president’s time in the White House. He points out that a “cataract of sniggering and brickbats may safely be expected as serious analysis of the presidency of George W. Bush begins, but it will not last: The historical standing of departing presidents tends to rise as emotionalism subsides.”

I find this particularly true, and there is a reason for it that might not be so obvious to all of us.

George Walker Bush is the first Internet Age president.

I can hear the protests already.

I know President Clinton is widely regarded as the first Commander and Chief in the Internet Age. This argument does have some merit, if you manage to forget the state of people’s interaction with the Internet throughout most of Clinton’s time in office. While the structure was there, no one was really using the Internet, at least not the way it is used now. In short, like all other presidents before him, William Jefferson Clinton never had to deal with YouTube.

The best illustration I can think of brings me back to college. I was a freshman in the fall of 1996 and distinctly remember how having an Ethernet card in my computer (even just having a computer) made me a unique commodity in dorm life. In fact, most of the first friends I made in college were the precious few students taking advantage of this fantastic and ever-connected gateway to the Internet.

Now, I would like you to think back to the ‘90s. How many of you had an e-mail address in 1996? How many of you had a computer? Then, there is the matter of connectivity. Before 2000 I could count on one hand the number of people I knew with a dedicated Internet connection. I myself used dial-up until 2001. As 2008 wraps up, I’ll bet I could walk down the block and be hard-pressed to find a family without a DSL line or Broadband modem.

Heck, forget computers, those clunky, wire-ridden desktop paperweights from 2004. Did you have a WiFi laptop? How did we drink coffee at Starbucks without the Internet to keep us company?

Did you even have a cell phone, let alone the wireless multimedia monsters many of us carry in our pockets nowadays? I have a HTC G1, and the little thing is at least as much a functioning laptop as the first portable computer I used to lug around.

So yes, we all are loaded down with Internet-driven gizmos now – where is this going? The Internet, with its global reach and growing audience, coupled with widespread access to increasingly inexpensive and impressively reliable computer technology birthed a nigh on infinite observation and criticism engine. This vast information network, once the plaything of the military and scientific community, is available to the masses. The printing press, a machine that revolutionized communication and learning the world over, is a child’s toy compared to the Internet.

Ten years ago, could you have read the Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, Jordan Times and Asahi Shimbun (without going to the newsstand, praying all the papers were there and paying for each one) and then signed into your blog and posted your thoughts about world events? With a click of the send button your observations are available to people in Chicago, New York, Paris, Amman and Tokyo. Congratulations, you have a potential news-reading audience that William Randolph Hurst would have envied. The best part is Google (along with many others) does it all for free.

Now you do not need an education, or an editor, to become a publisher. Please do not take this in a negative or degrading way. I am, after all, a part of this phenomenon. I do not need a newspaper or book publisher to get my ideas out to the public now. This revolutionary tool places voluminous libraries of information at my beck and call, and gifts me with an infinite amount of print space through which I may express myself. The Internet is a marvelous contribution to humanity’s quest to understand and relate to one another.

The sheer power of this newborn entity also begs a question, though. When this juggernaut of opinion is aimed at someone, what sort of effect will it have? Will it turn a good person into a saint? Not likely, since no news sells like bad news.

The masses thrive on gossip and innuendo, the peccadilloes of the famous and powerful. So, it seems to me, the Internet, being an expression of the multitudes, would blossom with megabyte after megabyte of negative attention directed towards the most visible in our world’s society.

I am not writing this because I am jaded with humanity. Put a jeweler’s loupe to a diamond and imperfections will magically appear. It stands to reason that staring at someone all the time, incessantly recording his or her movements, will, sooner or later, yield faults. If you start out looking for something to dislike, well, the process gets a whole lot easier. This whole procedure is greatly accelerated if the observers do not personally know their subject. It becomes strangely painless to say and write terrible things about other human beings.

President Bush has been a focus of attention of the Internet in a serious way since 9/11. I am not saying I agree with all the decisions President Bush has made during his tenure, but almost regardless of what he did, there was going to be a crushing wave of criticism, and not necessarily from the television and newspaper pundits. It is worthwhile to note that this criticism does not have nationality, either. It is as easy for a Brazilian to watch and comment on the president of the United States as it is for me.

I am sure that Conrad Black can attest to this, as his articles for the National Post are published on the Internet. Anyone with a keyboard can easily attack him, using his popularity to make their comments (often snide and without factual evidence, as blind comments are often wont to be) available to a much wider audience than they could garner themselves.

As it became easy to follow, in disturbing minutia, the exploits of the office of the President, obsession with the man grew exponentially. Once Bush is out of office and back on his ranch in the little town of Crawford, Texas, public opinion will become less harsh, if only because he is no longer in the limelight. Perhaps then a serious examination of his time in office might begin.

I wonder how President-elect Obama will fare in this dog-eat-dog world of 24/7 Internet-based obsession? He and his team used the power of the Internet to dazzling success during his campaign, easily routing John McCain on the virtual field of competition. Will this mean that President Obama will be able to harness the terrific power of the Internet to further his goals, or will it fall back on him like a collapsing ocean wave, bringing America’s next president’s poll numbers down, much like his predecessor?