Gotta separate the wheat from the chaff

George Will, criticizing Time magazine’s choice of Person of the Year, notes that “Most bloggers have the private purpose of expressing themselves for their own satisfaction.” No doubt that’s a true statement, strictly speaking, but even a few notable counter-examples like K. C. Johnson’s Durham-in-Wonderland can excuse a multitude of sins, as far as I’m concerned. Johnson has done a phenomenal job of covering a range of topics at the heart of the Duke lacrosse hoax, from egregious prosecutorial misconduct, to the manifold ways in which members of the “Committee of 88” Duke faculty disgraced themselves (and now hope nobody will notice), to the spinelessness of the Duke administration. Durham-in-Wonderland is a credit to the genre and shows what a skilled practitioner like Johnson can do with it.