Nowhere Man, Where are you taking The Border Whine now?

JPN, thanks for the primer on St. Croix Valley blogs, especially the On The Border Whine (OTBW) blog. However, lately I have become concerned about the direction OTBW is going.

As you know, when OTBW began in 2004, it was Bill "Nowhere Man" Danielson who grabbed the reins and set the tone for that blog. From his undisclosed location, he provided daily mean-spirited insults of many local people. The other OTBW'ers jumped on the bandwagon with their own anonymous offensive name-calling.

Of course, it was just human nature for townsfolk to go and look at it: "Marge, did you see what they said yesterday? I need to go look today and see if they said something even worse." And so, OTBW became an overnight phenomenon.

Nowhere Man provided the moral basis for these personal attacks, stating: "If one is to discover that any public official, publicly elected official, or anyone who lives off the backs of the producers, is found to be a fraud, or states for public consumption false and misleading information, or otherwise proves to be an incompetent boob/moron, then off come the gloves and a personal attack is fully warranted. In fact, it should be standard operating procedure."

Wow, what a great thinker.

But herein lies the rub. Nowhere Man is changing course in midstream. Apparently, he wants to be admired more for his intellectual pursuits than for his name-calling.

So, he writes: "I have had enough of this focused attacking - this blog is blessed with some incredibly talented minds who contribute regularly and write on a variety of complex topics. There is a great deal of challenging thought and writing with which to be proud."

In fact, today he has posted about (1) the classical tradition of nineteenth century liberalism, (2) education tax credits with Quentin Quade and Father Blum, and (3) the imaginary Land of Cockaigne.

YAWN. BORING!!!!!

So what are his followers to do?

If they follow the advice of Nowhere Man, people will stop reading OTBW faster than I can fall asleep during the Sunday sermon. But, if they keep up the personal attacks, then OTBW will continue to be what it has always been - a classless garbage dump.

My oh my, what to do??

While you are thinking about it, why not listen to the Beatles' Nowhere Man.

Click Here: http://www.delta.ro/beatles/beatles/nowherem.wav