Caveat Lector

(with apologies to I.B. Singer)

So the biblioblogosphere’s gotten out its monocles (sans ponies, alas) and its ascots and is responding with all seriousness and decorum to M-ch–l G-rm-n’s latest sallies on Brittanica. Ahem. If you care to learn more, a Technorati search will provide most necessary reading.

Me? I’m still stuck on the funny. C’mon, people, this is comedy platinum here! Laugh! I think I’ve still got one or two “One of the Blog People” buttons left. Who’s with me on a mass snailmail of same to Mr. Now One Of Us?

It does appear that G-rm-n was his usual insultingly privileged self. He’s pulled overt privilege trips before, and damn it, I am past annoyed and getting downright angry that my tribe is not calling him on them louder and more often. My personal thanks to those who have. Mr. G-rm-n can have my “alternative medicine” Armaid when he pries it out of my working-very-well-thank-you hands, the same hands that standard Western medical practice ignored for years and even damaged further.

For the most part, though, I’m kicking back and letting myself enjoy the joke. Much more fun than getting offended yet again at G-rm-n’s unshakable beliefs and offputting personal style. (I say “personal” rather than “writing,” incidentally, because I have met him, and he went out of his way to put me down. I’m not sure what it says about the personality of our profession that many of us revere this man when that same repellent condescension crisscrosses every bit of his written output I’ve ever seen. I’m damn sure it says some ugly things about elitism and privilege.)

I think Jane is on to something. “I’m better than the common man” is exactly what’s going on here. I do not, however, think that we need to be looking out for “trivia,” because the content of blogs is not the real meat of the attack. If it were, maybe we’d get cited and formally refuted once in a while, instead of merely sneeringly alluded to!

No, what’s going on here is captured neatly in this blog comment:

I think the main problem the presenter was trying to illustrate was the use of casual prose and an expression of personal feelings in a professional-themed post, which would never occur in a column because they have to meet Editorial Standards.

Aha. It’s not the content. It’s the register. The G-rm-ns of this world aren’t afraid of what we might say; they’re confident enough in their superiority and their privilege to think they can outargue us or just plain shut us down within the profession—no one who’s anyone reads blogs anyway, right?

What they’re scared of—and I wish I understood why, but I don’t; it can’t just be a control issue, it’s too visceral for that—is that conversations can be had, lessons learned, and decisions made without a choking cloud of turgid prose and rigid process descending over everything.

It’s almost an identity issue. If we don’t write the way librarians have heretofore written, are we still librarians? If we don’t do things the way libraries have heretofore done things, are we still working in libraries? Librarians are librarians. They behave a certain way and have certain narrow interests. They’re not knitters or gamers or parents or genre partisans (much less ficcers) or football fans or political activists (well, okay, maybe that last). So when they’re presenting themselves as librarians, librarianship should be the whole of the self-presentation. All that other stuff? Is other than, and therefore less than, librarianship. It should not be presented alongside it for fear of lowering the lofty communicative register that makes librarianship what it is.

That’s my read on all this. That’s my best guess about why G-rm-n hates bloggers but still contributed to a blog. He’ll never be a “blogger” as long as he still writes like a (G-rm-n–style) librarian. And he’ll slam me (metaphorically speaking) every chance he gets, because even when I’m writing for publication, I don’t write like a G-rm-n–style librarian. G-rm-n–style librarians don’t put “Roach Motel” in their article titles.

Now, it should be noted that the friction between work demeanor and non-work demeanor has been a CavLec theme since CavLec’s earliest days, with work-versus-blogging a common subtheme. I may well be reading my own issues into this kerfuffle; I was glad to see Jane’s and the Mad Strategerist’s contributions because they happened completely independently of me while still capturing pieces of my sense of the issue. Adjust your internal bias sensors accordingly.

And now I am done being all buttoned-down and serious, and shall therefore go off into a huge gale of laughter again, on my way back to my usual court-fool stance. Mr. Blog People his own self, blogging! How bloody hilarious is that?

ETA: And what should come up in my aggregator mere seconds after publication of this post? Some days I wonder why I bother. Except, the funny, the funny!