Return of the Soccer Mom Bloggers

Playing catchup tonight & sorting through posts / email that’s been piling up. One such item comes from Chad over at Steelypips: he counters call for more bloggers with a call for fewer pundit bloggers:
“The “blogosphere” is overrun with journalists and pundits and wannabe journalists and wannabe pundits presenting their view of the world. We’re swamped in political opinion pieces, most of which end up looking very similar, even when they come from different parts of the political spectrum…
But what I’d like to see is more occupational blogging. I’m getting tired or journalists and pundits, and people pretending to be journalists and pundits. Let’s get some more people writing about what they do for a living in other areas– teachers talking about education, editors talking about editing, caterers talking about catering, detective talking about detecting, garbagemen talking about trash collecting. 90% of such web logs will be crap, of course, but the 10% that are good will probably be fascinating in the same way that ‘True Porn Clerk Stories’ is.”
Well, I don’t know about that — porn’s pretty interesting, and all. But Chad’s point is well taken, and not at all in conflict with my original rallying cry.
I just want more bloggers, writing about whatever it is on Earth (or elsewhere) they find interests them. If that’s their career, great. I don’t promise to read them all, but I’ll be happy to know they are out there.
It’s hard to argue that there’s a lot of armchair punditry going on, and that much of it is — well, redundant is probably as kind a word as I can use accurately. But one point I was trying to make in my earlier post was that especially now, in a time of war, I think it’s important to have a healthy and open public debate on issues that affect us all.
You don’t have to be a pundit to express your feeling about what kind of society we should be: where you feel the best balance between security and freedom lies, for example. It’s that kind of contribution, not necessarily the Monday-morning politicking, that I think each and every person can make, if they choose to.