Indirectly via InstaPundit, I unintentionally stumbled across an untested hypothesis:
My group consisted of myself and one other classmate, Chris. We were assigned the fable “The Fox and the Grapes,” which consists of a fox jumping repeatedly for grapes that are just out of its reach, before finally giving up and declaring that the grapes are probably sour anyways. The moral of the fable? “It is easy to despise what you cannot get.”
While the fable was cited in the context of the unattainable (for most men) Salma Hayek, and it had originally been a source of pants-splitting embarrassment, I thought of bloggers as the fox and the MainStreamMedia as the grapes.
Is my hypothesis valid? Are some bloggers envious of the MSM? And, knowing full well that they’ll never attain equal prestige, are they inclined to “dis” the MSM in the same way as the fox?
EDITORIAL QUESTION: Why does the grape-seeker have to be a fox, anyway? Couldn’t the great Aesop have foreseen that this might cause confusion because of the Fox News Network?
Sorry to be second guessing Aesop, folks, but since I’ve started down this slippery slope, I might as well ask whether the fox and the grapes story suffers from a bit of static analysis. I mean, foxes are smart, right? And grapes are, well, more than dumb. Why, unless you’re a New Age nut, they’re almost inanimate. Surely the fox would realize that in time, the grapes would fall and be his to devour. They might even ferment a little, thus adding some gratification to the delay.
But seriously, I want to be fair to the mainstream journalists. And fairness dictates that it be recognized that they are not as dumb as grapes. To that extent, the analogy and the hypothesis are both flawed. However, if we see the grapes not as professional journalists, but as symbols of their work, the fruit of their journalistic accomplishments, might there be some life truth still to be salvaged from the fable?
Possibly. But there’s still the static analysis problem. I think that in real life journalism, the grapes have to be considered as attached to something sentient. This might not have been a problem for Aesop, as his fables were intended to be broadly interpreted, but for the modern age, we need more drama, more real live action!
Clearly, some type of Hollywoodish revisionism is called for, and I’m not thinking that sour grapes also need wrath.
I was thinking along the lines of the angry old apple trees in the “Wizard of Oz.”
Dorothy picked an apple, was promptly scolded, and then the scarecrow had an idea…..
SCARECROW:Come along, Dorothy — you don’t want any of those apples. Hmm!
FIRST TREE: What do you mean – she doesn’t want any of those apples? Are you hinting my apples aren’t what they ought to be?
SCARECROW: Oh, no! It’s just that she doesn’t like little green…worms!
As we all know, they got more apples than they wanted or needed. (Although it’s probably worth remembering that a single bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.)
I just hope the trees aren’t the bloggers.