What Ever Happened to Fistfights?

And the power of blogging.

This is one thing we’ve been wondering about over here at Clancco headquarters: what ever happened to the Pollock’s, the Mailers, and the Rodmans of yesterday; to respect and courtesy for the old school? December’s issue of Esquire Magazine has an interesting article by Chris Jones relating the anonymity made available via blogging to the importance of bringing back the spontaneous—but necessary—fistfight.

How’d we get here? Blogs are part of it, along with the incessant frothing of TV pundits and reality-show contestants, especially that lippy midget from The Amazing Race: Everybody thinks they’re above being edited. And the saddest part is, the Jerichos are right to feel bulletproof. Somewhere along the way, we’ve evolved into a culture without consequence, taught so much hokum about the bigger man walking away.

Is society really acting more and more like an internet? Perhaps, but in the real world (Lacanians love that), there are consequences, and it seems like in the virtual as well. Law.com reports of a Tennessee defense attorney who is arguing for a change of venue in a racially charged double murder, citing that postings on Internet blogs have tainted the jury pool. In his brief, Philip Lomonaco argued that blogs “spread lies and helped create an urban legend surrounding the details of the final state of the victims’ bodies — details meant to outrage and taint any jury pool. These untruths made a heinous crime even more horrific, and has created an irreversible fog of prejudicial publicity.”

Calling the Marlboro man.