BFTP: Snappy rejoinders - short term pleasure, long term pain?

I once sent this out to our optional, informal school mailing list:

Hi folks,

Very interesting article on the NYTimes blog:
Do School Libraries Need Books?

5 different perspectives on the question.

Doug

A short time later I received this response from a high school teacher:

Blogs are for the self-obsessed & self-absorbed

have a nice day

So I fired back:

Hi _______ ,

Rather a blanket condemnation of a format, I hope you taught my son when he was your student to judge the content of the writing rather than the container in which it comes.

Have a nice day to you as well,

Doug

Zing! Felt pretty good sending that out. At the time.

But I wonder now if I've made an enemy. Or created a relationship in which neither of us will now listen to the other? Were I to do it again, I would have gone over and had a visit with the teacher, F2F. Or ignored the comment completely.

I'm not having second thoughts about what I said. I believe format bigotry serves no one well and that good teachers should not model it. (Although I will admit many bloggers, including this one, are self-obsessed and self-absorbed.)

But I am wondering how I might have handled this better as a human being.

________________________________

I got a chuckle from the way James Likeks opened a column ina  Valentine's Day morning's Star Tribune:

Here's some Valentine's Day advice: If you need it now, from a newspaper, you're already in trouble.

Yup.

Original post Feburary 14, 2010

Comments

[Kenn Gorman]

I would have to modify that teacher's comment...

"Blogs (written by students who have not been taught what they are or how useful they can be) are for the self-obsessed & self-absorbed.

I think we could substitute many other terms besides blogs, such as Facebook, "selfies", Twitter, Youtube...