Does manufactured outrage count as trolling when you blog?

I love Ann Althouse's blog which I read every day and occasionally post comments there as well.  One thing she does  that drives me crazy though is the way she picks through the New York Times columnists and op-eds and finds something to snark or otherwise put down, condemn or get outraged about. Hey Ann! It's the New York Times for cryin' out loud! What the hell did you expect from them? But what you're actually going to get from them though is smug and obnoxious elite's mean and condescending putdowns of the fly-over country hillbillies on the other side of the Hudson River. But you would have to know that already wouldn't you?

IMHO this really amounts to trolling. And if that's your schtick then fine, run with it. But Ann don't forget you chose to enter their house. And it's bad form to  go into a titty bar if you're outraged by drinking, naked tits, and creepy horn dogs behaving badly and then complain about it. Not if you want to be taken seriously anyhow. Just saying.

Taliban facing its own "uprising"

In areas of Afghanistan that the Taliban control the local non-Talib tribes are ginning up their own anti-government uprising. What makes this an interesting occurrence is that where this is happening the Taliban is the government. So says the NY Times so these reports are somewhat suspect barring independent confirmation and it may just be the usual tit_for_tat kinda stuff that tribal cultures are  known for. But it's a development worth keeping an eye on. (Long War Journal, NY Times)

Sign of the Times...

This NY Times story about the cost of higher education has been wending its way through the innards of the blogosphere lately and I thought I'd chime in too. What sort of egoism or value system would recommend going into debt to the tune of a $100K to obtain a degree in religious & women's studies? The subject of the article is one such person did in fact make such a choice. And NYU, while not exactly an Ivy League school, is very, very good. But still though, is it a hundred grand worth of debt "good"? I doubt it. The poor girl is never gonna pay this debt off.

The prevailing American Dream ethos tells people: Go to college. Get a dream job. Buy a house. = Life will be good. But as we've seen with other debunked features of the American Dream, this ain't necessarily so. That NYU diploma is now revealed to have come at a really high price for what it is. I wonder what it is she learned there that she couldn't have learned at a far cheaper state college, community college, night school, or just reading on her own? Or was it all, first and foremost, about having that NYU sheepskin on the wall?

This reminds me of the stories I'd hear as a kid about how in some societies the family of a bride would go into ruinous debt to moneylenders in order to impress their village with spectacular wedding celebrations. I thought this was very foolish, ancient custom or not. Now it appears that many worldly and sophisticated Americans who ought to know better are going the same route. I just shake my head.

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