The Awfulness of Twitter

Writing in The Weekly Standard, the indomitable Andrew Ferguson takes his axe to Twitter. Twitter, for the uninitiated, is the technology that allows a blogger to shoot short thoughts blasts (140 characters or less) across the screen. Ferguson notes that many august journalists have taken to Twitter to share their real-time musings whether we want them or not. During the presidential debate coverage, one Washington Post reporter tells us where he ate the night before. A New Yorker critic writes, “McCain is the Kanye of politicians.” Pretty soon the haikus became “like watching a baseball game with a dotty uncle”—which, for journalists, was a pose usually confined to polished pieces.