(Photo by Travis Lindquist/Getty Images)
How much insight is too much insight?
Michael Vick is an infamous quarterback. He’s also a popular talking point. In the wake of Vick’s return with the Philadelphia Eagles, the blogosphere is brimming with polemics and apologies—which would be happier news if quantity were even loosely correlated to quality.
Curiosity means learning as much as you can.
Intelligence, on the other hand, means learning as much as you should.
I’m not suggesting that the Vick story is unimportant. We read because we care, and the demand for nonstop Vick coverage speaks volumes about our collective values. But more commentary isn’t necessarily better commentary. In a media market where the consumer is always right, there’s no critic who gets paid to tell us when we’ve all got it wrong.
Knowledge is power.
Discretion is virtue.
If you want the real scoop on Vick, you have to tune out every voice that promises to deliver it.
Sports fans thrive on opinion. From experts, from amateurs, from the guy sitting next to us at the bar—we collect viewpoints like trading cards, as if enlightenment were merely the sum of all sound bites. The catch, alas, is that no one else can teach you how to think. Google addicts will argue that the final revelation about Vick is out there waiting to be found. I’d counter that one more Web search is exceptionally unlikely to show us whatever it is we’re looking for.
It’s smart to get the facts.
It’s smarter to get the truth.
Vick may deserve scorn, sympathy, or every s-word in between, but the only sentiment worth sharing is the one you select for yourself.
The human mind is nature’s most potent content filter. To aggregate is the limit of machines; to scrutinize is the labor of mankind. Michael Vick’s darkest secret is for you to discover on your own, after the Yahoo! Buzz has subsided and the Digg voters have drifted away. Every student is enriched by the resources on his desk. The one with a high-speed modem should be careful not to invest too heavily in the data at his fingertips.
*
T.S. Eliot never had a Twitter account, but he did glimpse the perils of free online publishing services:
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Which are apt questions in this age of cheap and instant communication.
Because babble is the mother tongue of cyberspace, and anyone who professes boundless faith in a user-generated gospel is either preaching on the Open Source Sports Network or only just saying, is all...
We're going to send you the most entertaining Philadelphia Eagles articles, videos, and podcasts from around the web.
35 Comments
Loading more comments...
This comment and all replies have been deleted This comment has been deleted Undo delete