The value-added approach to blogging

I think Kathleen Parker needs to avoid certain blogs and read others. Says Parker:

Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure.

What Golding demonstrated - and what we're witnessing as the Blogosphere's offspring multiply - is that people tend to abuse power when it is unearned and will bring down others to enhance themselves. Likewise, many bloggers seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement. When a mainstream journalist stumbles, they pile on like so many savages, hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding's children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow.

She has a fine point, but is engaging in a bit of hyperbole and generalization. Of the several bloggers I know as friends, not one is of the ilk she mentions. We all tend to approach the blog similarly: looking to be value-adding members of the b'sphere.