It’s been a few years since I first heard the term “credentialed” used infelicitously to describe a person having “official” status and specific rights and privileges at staged events such as university symposia, professional performances or politicians'/ public officials’ press conferences.
The term later devolved (as inelegant but forceful-sounding neologisms tend to) into something more informal, e.g., a person might be considered and described as a “credentialed” intellectual because they had acquired a "reputation penumbra" on the internet following a certain number of meaningless appearances in cyberspace. (See “meme,” “trope,” & c.)
Persistent blogging makes one a “credentialed blogger,” I believe, in both of the senses described above. I don’t think believe it is the highest form of approbation.
The very best “credentialed blogger” I know is also one of the finest poets I have ever read. His work has enlarged and enlightened me most of my life, i.e., since I was 16. Lately, however, his remarkable ekphrasis-driven blog has soared to new heights of affecting, heart-rending verbal and visual expression by presenting consistently unfair, unthoughtfully biased views of the unspeakably tragic events in Israel and Gaza. Although this blogger/poet can never be accused of unclear, inelegant or inarticulate expression, he should leave Ezra Pound out of it unless he wishes to be thoroughly and permanently misunderstood. Perhaps he considers such things to be an “occupational hazard.”
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Photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn.
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