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I thought it interesting to learn about the blog post from Bobby Calvan – the blog no longer exists – which proves that nothing is impossible. (Hat tip Steve Urquhart) For those who are interested the entire post – and the 197 comments that were generated in just over 3 hours – has been preserved by Doc Weasle.
A brief summary would go like this – Bobby, a reporter, is in a hurry in Baghdad and is delayed by an American soldier because of insufficient identification at a checkpoint. He feels superior to the soldier because this particular soldier has not heard of Knight Ridder (and pronounces the name wrong to boot). He then takes to time to blog about the incident as evidence that the American soldiers, “are the absolute worst.”
In feeling so intellectually superior to this soldier he demonstrates that one bit of trivia is not proof of a great body of knowledge. Apparently he is unaware that Knight Ridder is not a household name (like the Associated Press, or ever Reuters might be) because they don’t publish anything with their name. In other words, they are exactly one step further up the money chain than most readers ever dig into their news sources.
The post proves that even in Baghdad Bobby Calvan felt safe enough to cop an attitude with a soldier and that it doesn’t take long to have almost 200 people tell him off for it.
I’m not sure which is harder – uniting the internet (like Bobby Calvan did) or enforcing democracy as an outsider (like the soldier in Baghdad is trying to do). Hopefully the soldiers will eventually be as successful as Mr. Calvan has been.
4 replies on “Doing the Impossible”
Thanks for the link.
I’ve also posted some emails I exchanged with him, where he seems genuinely contrite, but then he took down the entire site.
I also posted an email defending him from someone claiming to be a colleague, from the SacBee server, so maybe its legit, who knows.
Anyway, thanks for linking.
I almost cried at some of the comments on that post. Thanks for linking it.
I wonder if the combat rules of engagement have a ” this guy’s being a jerk” provision. If so, I wonder what the rules are.
If I find that such rules exist I’ll make sure to post them 😉