Reagan: Patron Saint Of The New Media?

The Times Online has done it again.

Film star blondes such as Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Sharon Stone and Scarlett Johansson are held up as ideals of feminine allure. However, the future of the blonde is uncertain.

A study by the World Health Organisation found that natural blonds are likely to be extinct within 200 years because there are too few people carrying the blond gene. According to the WHO study, the last natural blond is likely to be born in Finland during 2202.

Tasty little newsblip, eh? Makes a nice windup for an article, gets the readers’ attention…

Pity that nowadays, the readers have search engines.

And Snopes.

Adding insult to injury, note that the Snopes entry dates back to 2002. (And cites Reuters. That’s got to hurt.)

One shouldn’t be too harsh on Dobson and Taher, I suppose. There’s been a rash of the dreaded rush-to-pontificate lately. No less a figure than William F. Buckley declared defeat in Iraq, awaiting the civil war… that didn’t erupt. Glenn Reynolds contracted a case of Dubai World Ports flu; although, to do him justice, he seems to have recovered more swiftly than Mr. Buckley did.

At least the commentariat seems to have done better on the ricin that wasn’t.

Still. If any group in the information ecosystem ought to be aware of the perils of rushing the story to get the juicy scoop, it ought to be the blogosphere. After all, the 48 hours meme comes from bloggers’ experiences, as we tried to make sense in realtime of the news from the second Gulf War.

Perhaps we could use a patron saint, out here in the infosphere.

If so, I nominate Ronald Reagan, on the strength of:

“Trust… but verify.”

48 hours, people. Take those 48 hours.

Or… if you’ve got your towel as well as your wits about you…

Don’t Panic.

The clipboard tips to Windrider and Rand.