"sad and nasty little people"

[_sock puppet]

In Dr Scratch's signature line, currently you may find this wit and wisdom of Daniel C Peterson, gas bag extraordinaire:

"The web is a very useful thing. But it’s also given some very sad and nasty little people a platform that they wouldn’t have had a few years ago." --DCP, online, 9/26/12

The internet is quite egalitarian; admission here requires a computer and an internet connection. Not much by way of skids that need greasing is required.

DCP has spent his life trying to grease the skids, both for a rare platform for his pontification (a college classroom, print journals) and within Mormon hierarchy. He made bishop, but his Mormon ambitions seem to have entailed 'sugar plums dancing in his head' for at least a slot in a Q of the 70s. He's published broadly, but the web has diluted his voice to just one now among millions rather than merely thousands.

In this egalitarian market place of ideas we call the internet, ideas get challenged, modified and vetted. Those that gain traction and survive do so by their merits, not the degrees and connections of its proponents. (And the exposing notions about early Mormon history continue because of the unveiling of the historical facts, due in large part because of the web.)

DCP's condescension and disdain for the web giving 'some very sad and nasty little people a platform' is quite similar to the warning cries by CBS, NBC, ABC, the NYTimes, Washington Post, and LA Times in the 1990s that CNN, Fox News, MSNBC were not to be trusted. And similar to all those media then just a handful of years ago warning that we should not believe the news we read on the internet because anyone can say anything on the internet. First Ted Turner, then Roger Ailes, and thirdly the internet. Threats each one to the ability of old line media to control the news message we masses would hear.

That is the point, Dr Peterson. On the net anyone can say anything, and anyone can challenge any idea. Its beauty lies in the fact it gives others a platform to be heard. The sad and nasty little people include you and those that cannot see that the net's giving a platform for more people, and more opinions, and more views is precisely what makes the internet such a valued advent.

[_RockSlider]

You best duck dude …. Seems the war machine, after an embarrassing attack at Scratch, is now going after the minion list (the really little sad and nasty people).

[_sock puppet]

Maybe Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had DCP and his ilk and times like these--just days before an election--in mind when they penned this, back in 1968

Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Lets drink to the salt of the earth

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth

And when I search a faceless crowd
A swirling mass of gray and
Black and white
They don't look real to me
In fact, they look so strange

Raise your glass to the hard working people
Lets drink to the uncounted heads
Lets think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead

Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio

And when I look in the faceless crowd
A swirling mass of grays and
Black and white
They don't look real to me
Or don't they look so strange

Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Lets drink to the salt of the earth

Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets drink to the salt of the earth
Lets drink to the two thousand million
Lets think of the humble of birth