Well keyboards don't write people do. Bad writing, and sloppy ideas are pretty equally distributed througout all media.

If you read between the lines of this piece, it's easy to discern exactly where Richard Schickel is coming from.  It's a dark lonely place, a place inhabited almost exclusively by writers, though I imagine many other forms of expression have some type of similar experience.

To put it bluntly, writers as a group, regardless of what they write, have historically been viewed by human society as being a dime a dozen, and the modern world of writing is no exception to this rule.  Critics especially inhabit a unique type of writers hell, for as we all know there is no lower form of writing, at least that's what some would have you believe.  Though I would say that the New York Times Book Review stands in opposition to that rather vicious criticism, especially when you consider that many of those reviews are far better than the books which they address.  But of course no one reads the New York Times book review, except writers, and a select few readers.

Schickel's little attack here on bloggers is nothing more than a rather desperate attempt to separate himself, and see himself as engaging in some kind of "elite" art form, which to his mind has been polluted and diluted by the blogging world.  As if the world of criticism itself were anything more than a cesspool inhabited by the failed, who finding themselves unable to do, inevitably resorting to criticizing those who can, or at least those who continue to try, and as of yet have not been so disillusioned as to give themselves over to dismantling the work of others.

Perhaps not everyone can write a review of merit which brings insight and enlightenment, but almost anyone can criticize, it is an innate part of being a human being, the ability to see the flaws, whether you voice those observations or not we all do it, some just do it a little more eloquently and with greater alacrity.

What Schickel doesn't write about here is the plethora of fantastic writers out there who for various reasons will never be read by anyone other than a lucky few.  They toil in obscurity, writing their little blogs about their little lives and observances, often delivering a literary agility which would be the envy of Mr. schickel and many a published author who make their living churning out mediocre crap for the limited minds of mediocre readers, desperately seeking anything to take them away from the drudgery of their daily lives.  

I've run across some of these authors myself, who write a few lines every few days.  They work nights at Wal-Mart in Kentucky and babysit their drooling little cousins during the day, while simultaneously producing some of the most entertaining and deeply insightful blurbs you could ever want to read.  No doubt many of them will go almost completely unread judging by the zeros in the comments section, until perhaps a thousand years from now when there blogs are discovered in some forgotten database, or unearthed by an archaeologist who uncovers an ancient Iomega hard drive buried in the remains of a trailer park.