Hesiod spams me & others with a link to following challenge:
“THE DR. WEEVIL CHALLENGE: Here’s a rather simple challenge to all those who favor a war with Iraq: How about ponying up an extra 3% on your income taxes to pay for it? You don’t have to join the Marines and face down Saddam’s chemical-weapons tipped scuds. You don’t have to send members of your family to die in the Persian Gulf.
All you have to do is pay a relatively small surcharge on your income taxes.
Surely a war to prevent Saddam Hussein from blowing up Chicago or Houston with a nuclear bomb is worth that?
Right?”
Sigh. I think he actually expects us to say “no”.
Yes, Hesiod, if my contribution were what would make the difference between us proceeding to depose a murderous dictator who is developing weapons of mass destruction and issuing threats against America as we speak, and, say, sitting on our hands and doing absolutely nothing while we wait for him to obtain those weapons, then yes, sign me right up.
I’ll pay, and do so gladly.
Any other questions?
Month: September 2002
Strength in Chaos
It’s here. Anniversary week.
It feels like some kind of dark holiday; sneaking up faster than you expect and leaving you wondering where the time went. Was it really a year ago? Seems improbable; impossible.
And now, there’s a preoccupation running loose across the country; a tension and worry — particularly among the media — about what they should do this week. What they should say; print, program. What is appropriate, and what is not.
Watching all this self-analysis and doubt, I’m drawn back to the first weeks after the attack. I was watching one of the benefit concerts — the Concert for New York, I think — and some of those same thoughts were running through my mind. Is this right?
And it slowly dawned on me that the question itself was faulty. Not just faulty; worse than that. It was un-American.
Because the question assumes that there is some “correct” method of recognizing what was done to us; some one way — or limited spectrum of ways — that we can all deem appropriate.
Could there be a less American thought?
China, perhaps, might set a National Mood, and ensure that all public remembrances; all media commentary, followed it faithfully. Cuba, I’m sure, celebrates its holidays similarly; with a firm consensus across the land as to How To Feel; with compliance ensured at the point of a gun.
That, of course, is not our way.
Our way is noisy; it’s messy, and chaotic and tacky and somber and inspiring and revolting and dramatic and insipid; it’s full of genuine heroes and puffed up nobodies; it’s crass and commercial and giving and charitable and is guaranteed to showcase the absolute best and absolute worst in our society.
Our way is to have no one way. It is to have millions. One per citizen, as a matter of fact.
And so a word to the network executives; the managing editors; the columnists and pundits and anchors and journalists and yes, bloggers: stop worrying about whether you’re setting the right tone. Stop worrying about whether what you’re doing is appropriate.
Stop worrying about whether you’re going to screw it up. Because you can’t.
Program the most sentimental, cult-of-victimhood survivor profiles you can find. Write the most blustery, jingoistic let’s-kill-’em-all columns you can produce. Program hour after hour of airbrushed, santized remembrances, full of waving flags and slow-motion firefighters. Do some hard journalism and show us the facts of what really happened; and what threats still face us out there. Give us celebrities telling us where they were when it happened, somberly reflecting on How They Were Moved. If you’re in Big Media, do exactly what you think will boost your ratings highest. Or say screw it all, and do a week full of programming that feels right to you without giving a damn about Neilsen. If you’re a CEO, sponsor some commercials on Wednesday — or don’t; whichever helps you sleep better at night. Or whichever helps your bottom line. If you’re a blogger, let fly your deepest raw emotion and reaction without sanitizing it for public consumption. Or write the kind of piece you know everyone wants to hear — make a play for those big links — even if it isn’t really what you’re feeling.
Pander. Offend. Inspire. Challenge. Inform. Manipulate. Provoke.
In short, do your worst. And your best. It’s all part of the dialogue. It’s all part of how America reacts in time of crisis. In our glorious chaos, we demonstrate who we are far better than any national proclamation could ever hope to do.
And this American, at least, wouldn’t have it any other way.
Addendum: Sean Hackbarth some qualms with this approach, stating:
It’s “all part of the dialogue,” but that doesn’t make it virtuous. Remembering the terrorist attacks by some intellectually dishonest lesson plans uncritical of our enemies is no honor to the victims and heros of that awful day. Building a sterile, post-modern memorial like the monstrosity in Oklahoma City will allow the memory of those killed to fade away. There are good and bad responses to September 11. I’m a fan of dialogue. It’s both entertaining and thought-provoking. Nevertheless, every voice shouldn’t be considered equivalent.
Thanks to Sean for a good point which helped me clarify my own thinking. Let me see if I can elaborate further on my original piece and address Sean’s concerns:
1) All voices are equivalent in matters which we must decide as a nation. That would include, I’m afraid, the kind of monument that we will build to 9/11. I will join Sean in speaking out against a banal, ugly monument — but if it is truly determined that such a memorial is, in fact, what the majority of our fellow citizens want, well then, we should sit down and shut up. But until that time, we should vigorously speak our minds. Democracy in action.
2) The example of the memorial has a key aspect — it’s something which there can be only one of. We can’t all go our own ways on it; we have to make a choice as a nation. Contrast this with, say, how a weblog will commemorate the anniversary. In that case, there’s no need to choose; everyone can (and should) do exactly as they please. So I say: if a choice must be made, it should be made as a democracy; if we can avoid making a choice at all and allow everyone to reach their own decision individually, even better.
3) Sean concludes by saying, “every voice shouldn’t be considered equivalent”. I would agree — many of the voices being raised this week will be spouting what I consider to be nonsense. I will define them as stupid, insipid, or foolish, and I might well do so publicly. But while I agree that “every voice shouldn’t be considered equivalent”, I will also stand by the proposition that every voice should have an equal right to be heard. That doesn’t mean “right to be heard without being criticized” — because the freedom to criticize others’ views and statements is simply another form of the right to be heard itself. It’s been said far better by those who have come before me: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”*
A good sentiment to hold in mind this week, I think.
* I have found conflicting citiations for the originator of this rather famous declaration; QuoteWorld says it was Alexis de Tocqueville, while Quoteland indicates that the quote is commonly attributed to Voltaire, but was actually originated by his associate S. G. Tallentyre.
Sexism… Or lack thereof
Folks –
I’ve mostly stayed out of the contentious parts of the “sexism in the Blogosphere” debate, and that isn’t about to change now. However, Meryl did me as an example of sorts of how, perhaps, gender influenced who the Big Boys linked to:
Was it sheer coincidence that NZ Bear shot up to the top of the blogosphere? Or was it sexism, as no female blogger has ever garnered the attention he received quite so quickly? (We’re talking pre-ecosystemGlenn Reynolds, Bill Quick, and Stephen Green treated Bear like a long-lost brother returned home…)
Well, it’s obviously impossible to say what influenced those fellows to link to me, and I won’t try. Do I believe there was gender-bias involved? No. Can I prove it? Also no.
Except… let’s take a look at all the links I got from Glenn in the early days of my blog:
May 18, 2002 – HEADS ROLLING: Josh Marshall says the 9/11 intelligence problems were more likely systemic than the result of dereliction of duty… And The Bear says we should focus on the bottom line…
May 25, 2002 – AD HOMINEM ALERT: Ben Domenech says that my post on teen sex means I can’t be a father… UPDATE: And N.Z. Bear has some comments on fatherhood.
May 28, 2002 – BLOGGER N.Z. BEAR has a lengthy post on the latest Amnesty International report on human rights…
May 28, 2002 – “HE’S MORE MACHINE NOW THAN MAN:” Hillary Carter continues her feud with Richard “Darth” Bennett… UPDATE: The Bear says much the same. So does Stephen Green.
May 29, 2002 – THE BEAR SAYS I’m wrong about Bill Frist’s HIV/Terrorism speech
May 31, 2002 – BLOGGER N.Z. BEAR has a piece in Salon today. It’s his/her first professional sale. Congrats, Bear!
Wait a minute…
“his/her first professional sale” ?
Kinda difficult to charge Glenn with any trace sexism in my case when he didn’t seem to be clear on my gender until he had already linked to me five times, isn’t it?
Sex (and Sexism) in the Blogosphere
Decided that Meryl’s posts regarding call to revolution deserved more prominence. Particularly since she doesn’t have comments, and I do — somehow, I suspect there might be debate around these.
Issue 1: Is there sexism from the “big guns” in the Blogosphere? Meryl says yes:
Do the A-listers link more often to male bloggers and ignore female bloggers? Do the guys have an online boys club where they check their buddies out first? Was it sheer coincidence that NZ Bear shot up to the top of the blogosphere? Or was it sexism, as no female blogger has ever garnered the attention he received quite so quickly?
…Yes, I think there is sexism in the blogosphere, and it is for the most part unintentional. I was working on a post on that topic months ago, and as a for-instance, I checked the blogrolls of the weblogs I visited regularly and discovered an appalling ratio of female-to-male bloggers on blogrolls…
Disclaimer/Reminder: Meryl and I are old (and I do mean old) offline friends; she’s allowed to use me as an example.
Issue 2: Can a woman post about sex (and post suggestive photos of herself) and still expect to be taken seriously on other subjects? Meryl is dubious:
“Yeah, I’ve heard the argument: There are great investigative articles in Playboy and Penthouse. I’ve even read many of them, since in my days as a typesetter my typehouse published Penthouse. But those investigative articles are not written by the women who are spreading their legs for the centerfold. It’s a credibility issue. It’s difficult to take Dawn seriously under these circumstances…
If you spend an overwhelming amount of words (or pictures) in your weblog on one theme, and then get annoyed with people when they lock you into that theme, you’ve already lost the high ground. It’s rather unfair to blame people for thinking of you in one way when you’ve worked hard to establish that they do think of you that way. Dawn, my suggestion: Start a new weblog for your serious topics, and stick with the sexuality on Up Yours. I can’t see any other way out of your dilemma.”
My thoughts? I still have a nagging feeling that this is a double standard, which was one of the issues I raised in my original emails to Meryl goading her into weighing in on this topic.
I think I agree with Meryl, though, when she says that it is a bit much to complain about being pigeonholed into one topic (regardless of if it is sex or humor) when you yourself have made that topic the focus of your blog. So when Dawn says:
“[Glenn] has even linked to me, but I have noticed a trend in what he links to: it’s never any of my more heady posts, but usually something sexual, which taken out context, comes off as condescending or even vaguely insulting.”
…I think perhaps she’s being a bit oversensitive. The fact that Glenn (or anybody) tends to link to her sex posts might well be explained by simple probability; if you generally write about sex, chances are when you get a link, it’ll be on a post about sex.
But… I can’t help still thinking that if Dawn’s main topic was humor; or cooking; or sports, or something — anything — other than sex, then Meryl might have been more willing to rally to her cause. As Meryl herself says, “It’s a credibility issue. It’s difficult to take Dawn seriously under these circumstances…”. So the conclusion I have to reach is that writing about sex removes your credibility — or posting suggestive photos of yourself removes your credibility. And I’m still not sure why sex is more credibility-removing than the silliness Lair brings to the table much of the time (and then counters with intelligent, heartfelt commentary at other times). And while its arguable whether Lair’s style alienates him from gaining respect widely, I know for a fact that he has mine, and Meryl’s.
Enough of my opinions. Your turn. Comment away, please…
Talkin’ Bout a Revolution
Dawn Olsen is tired of the current hierarchy in the Blogosphere, and is to stir up a revolution:
“The biggest bloggers (those with the most influence and traffic) do what they do and link who they feel support their beliefs and arguments. If you aren’t a war-blogger then there seems to be no reason to pay attention to you. And even if you do include politics and war-blogging in your material, but focus mainly on micro/personal issues, say someone like Shell, you are still overlooked by the mainstream people…NO ONE HAS A RESPONSIBILITY TO LINK TO ANYONE ELSE. But……
It turns out a lot of people seem to have a similiar unspoken feelings about the heirarchy, and feel somewhat resentful about being ignored by the appointed leaders.
Well who appointed them? We did. Every blogger who links them or reads them appointed them. And why not? They are all excellent writers, state their points of view well, and the majority of the community agree with them. But that doesn’t make them nice people or appropriate leaders. Not all leaders do an equal job with the responsiblity handed them…
I won’t read them, I won’t link to them and I will not speak of them again…The current state of affairs can be changed. The weight and power of the collective blogalaxy can cause a huge shift if it wants to. That’s how revolutions begin.”
A disclaimer: Dawn took great pains to ensure she stated her point clearly and fairly, and I’ve attempted to preserve that spirit in my quotes, but it was a difficult job, so I heartily recommend you read the whole thing.
Dawn’s gotten a batch of comments already, some insulting, some insightful. The best of the lot imho came from Ann Salisbury:
“The way I see it is this: you have your thing, other bloggers have theirs. Your traffic will grow as other people who are interested in what you have to say find you. In the same way, the “other” bloggers traffic has grown based on what they have to say (and maybe when they started saying it).
I have issues with some “other” bloggers too. Mostly because they don’t welcome reasoned or spirited dissent on their blogs. Fair enough — it’s their blog. They are not performing a public service. By the same token, I’m not required to return, read or link to them. Am I a little hurt by their behavior, yes. But there are many, many worse things in life.
So repeat after me: “I am not my traffic. I am not my traffic.”
Dawn kindly asked me to chip in my thoughts (I had commented on a related subject on her board), so here’s my $0.02.
First, Ann is bang on: traffic for traffic’s sake is silly. I’m getting hits on my page for “s0ccer m0m p0rn” from Google right now (I’m # 1 ! ) because somebody posted a comment mentioning the P0rn Video Store Blogger in reply to my post on how I wish everyone (including s0ccer m0m’s) were blogging. Somehow, I don’t think those folks are adding much value to my site (nor do I suspect I’m providing them what they seek, either).
That said, I think Dawn is looking for more than a way to simply increase her own traffic stats; she’s looking to change the entire “state of affairs”, as she put it, of how the Blogosphere is organized. A “revolution”, in fact.
Let me try to set a specific goal here, and hopefully I’m interpreting Dawn correctly: she’s looking to change the balance of power, so to speak, which I interpret as wanting to see more traffic flowing to the less-established bloggers, and less traffic flowing to the few, core “leaders” that are “in power” today.
Dawn’s approach is to act within her sphere of influence: she will no longer link to our mention the current “leadership” on her blog, and she encourages others to do the same if they feel similarly.
The problem is, I can’t see this ever changing the distribution of traffic in any significant way. And that would seem to be the goal.
Why? Well, first let’s look at the direct effects. Imagine that Dawn’s got 300 visitors a day currently, and Evil Leader #1 has 4,000 visitors a day (I’m making numbers up, obviously). If EL1 links to Dawn (or doesn’t), it has a major impact on her traffic, because EL1’s incoming traffic is so much greater than hers. But the converse isn’t true: if Dawn doesn’t link to EL1, EL1 isn’t going to even notice. The visits she might (or might not) send his way are completely insignificant compared to his normal base traffic.
OK, so Dawn isn’t going to be able to hurt the Evil Leaders by depriving them of traffic directly. That was pretty obvious, really; Dawn didn’t need me to tell her that.
The more interesting question, really, is how both Dawn and the Evil Leaders gain new readers. How does somebody who has never read a blog in their life find the first blog they decide to read regularly?
Well, I claim it is a matter of visibility. You’ve got visibility in the Blogosphere itself — how many other bloggers are linking to you — and then, for some higher-powered bloggers, you’ve actually got visibility in mainstream media.
The problem Dawn’s effort faces is that the Evil Leaders’ visibility is just as disproportionate with hers as their traffic is. A new blog-reader is far, far more likely — just by random chance of what they happen to have seen in a BigMedia article on blogging or by stumbling onto somebody’s blog page somewhere — to find themselves routed to the Evil Leaders’ pages than to Dawn’s.
But, you say, Dawn’s content is far more interesting to some people than the Evil Leaders’! They’ll want to read Dawn’s stuff more!
And that is most certainly true; Dawn offers her own unique voice that I’m sure many folks would choose over the Evil Leaders’. But it doesn’t matter, because chances are, the vast majority of Dawn’s potential audience is never going to find her. The Evil Leaders’ have the visibility: they get the new readers. Think gravity: they’ve got the mass; the readers are going to naturally fall towards them. Some tiny few will trickle out, and venture into the deep dark unknown, and they may then find Dawn’s little asteroid circling out somewhere beyond Mars. But most won’t — including most of those who really would enjoy her work.
But… what if Dawn manages to convince a lot of other people to also not link to the Evil Leaders anymore?
Well, theoretically, if you got enough of the Blogosphere on board, maybe it would work. But maybe not even then. Those Evil Leaders have a large amount of traffic coming to them with no referrals at all; so those ‘base’ readers wouldn’t be affected at all. Sure, you could chip away at their visibility over time, but you’d have to have a rather big chunk of the existing Blogosphere on your side to make much of a difference — and, by the way, you’d have to make sure you got to every single brand-new blogger first, before they do what every new blogger does today — put up links on their page to the Evil Leaders.
This is not to say that Dawn should drink the Cool-Aide and keep linking to people she doesn’t approve of, of course. Nor should anybody else. But sorry as I am to say it, I can’t see a “revolution” coming of it.
But… perhaps there is another way. Not to unseat the Evil Leaders, necessarily — I suspect we’ll always see a power-law distribution of traffic — but at least to ensure that people who would enjoy Dawn’s work can find it.
Yes, I have a bias here; and yes, I’m selling something.
It’s my little metadata effort, of course. The whole point of which is to allow bloggers to tell the world about themselves; to publish information about who they are and what they blog — and to ensure that there are ways for readers to search on that information and find them.
If we can be successful in our effort, new readers won’t just have to rely on the Evil Leaders to point them to other blogs to read. They’ll be able to go to a search portal and search on — for instance — female bloggers who write about sex and politics.
And bing, out pops a link to Up Yours.
Anyway. Yes, I’m evangelizing again, but it’s kinda my job, so forgive me. And I do truly believe in that which I speak. Bottom-up revolutions are all fine and good — but in this case, the technology as it exists today stacks the game against the little people. I’m working to change that — not necessarily to unseat the Evil Leaders (I think many of them are fun, in, well, an Evil kind of way) — but to empower the Little People.
Connect every blogger with their full “natural audience” of readers who are out there, not knowing they exist but who would enjoy their work — do that, and that my friends, will be the revolution.
Update: Meryl weighs in on sexism in the Blogosphere, and whether sex & serious politics can mix.
Bending over backwards? What, us?
Observe the latest news this morning (focus on the headline):
Iraq says airstrike hit civilians
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sept. 6, 2002 | BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Iraq on Friday accused U.S. and British planes of striking civilian targets during an air raid southwest of Baghdad, and it claimed its anti-aircraft batteries chased off the attacking jets.
The U.S. military said Thursday that American and British planes attacked an air defense command and control facility at a military airfield 240 miles southwest of Baghdad.
The U.S. Central Command said the strike was a response to an Iraqi attack on allied aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone.
On Friday, Iraqi state newspapers quoted an unidentified Iraqi military spokesman as saying enemy warplanes had attacked “civil and service installations” in the al-Rutbah area on Thursday. They gave no further details about the sites.
Iraq almost invariably accuses allied planes of attacking civilian targets.
Help me out here, folks; I’m just a poor blogger. I don’t know about all that high-falootin’ professional journalism and stuff. But if Iraq “almost invariably accuses allied planes of attacking civilian targets”, why the hell is that the bloody headline?
As far as I know, this is the only story the AP is running on this incident in its main feed — at the least, it’s the only one Salon is posting from their AP feed. So again, help me understand: is the fact that Iraq complained about it really the most significant aspect of this story? Do I really need to Stephen over there to explain a few things to the Associated Press?
Here’s the link — I’m exposing the filename because it, too, demonstrates the point: http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2002/09/06/civilians/index.html
Pssst. Hey You. Wanna Design a Spec?
Hey you.
Yeah, you.
You a geek?
Shhh. I won’t tell nobody. S’okay, you’re with friends here.
Yeah? Good, good. First step to recovery and all that.
But listen — you want a hit of something strong?
Like, let’s-change-the-world-with-technology strong?
Oh yeah, I knew you did.
Then let me clue you in on the latest thing.
It’s called
Yeah, yeah, I know the name sucks, they’re fixing that. Nevermind that.
But its powerful stuff, man.
Designing metadata to describe weblogs across the planet.
Enabling search engines beyond your wildest dreams; find blogs by topic; geography; language, what-ever.
Looping in blogging tool providers to get their input and to get ’em to implement the stuff right in their tools — yeah, they’re talkin’ to the big boys.
XML, RDF, Dublin Core — it’s the real deal.
And its an open source effort: 100% pure. Only the good stuff.
Come on, man. All the cool kids are doing it.
Snarky Comment to Start The Day
From continuation of the Sullivan-Andersen blogging conversation:
Andersen: “By the way, a screenwriter friend of mine following these dispatches in L.A., e-mailed me today and said about andrewsullivan.com: ‘I confess
Too many metas to count
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link in the latest edition o’ weblogging chronicles. He quotes both Meryl and myself, and in so doing, actually addresses one of my key points of criticism (that Slate should have included a lesser known blogger in the conversation), as he himself points out:
“But here’s another piece of blogging’s genius. We just did that! You can rectify editorial choices in real time all the time. If this conversation takes off, we can even continue it without Slate at all! “
Yup. And because the subject here is how blogging works, I’ll tell y’all exactly how the timeline looked for this tiny little episode in the Blogosphere:
4am – I awake to find an email from Meryl pointing me to her piece (yeah, I couldn’t sleep this morning)
4:30 – 5:30am – I blog my snarky response, quoting both Andrew & Kurt’s piece, and Meryl’s.
Somewhere between 6am – 12pm – Andrew reads my piece & Meryl’s, finds them amusing enough to quote, and drafts his own response.
12:30 pm – Andrew’s piece is posted to Slate
Try to get that kind of cycle time on dead trees some time.
And just to make everybody think that now that Andrew has linked to me I’ll suck up to him, here’s another point he gets right:
“But at a more profound level, I think the real power will be unleashed by unknown writers finding a way to get their work in front of readers more easily than ever before. The whole process of interning, or begging for work at local papers, sucking up to agents and editors, and so on can now be supplemented by real self-publishing. You can make your own clips! This can only help — however marginally — discover new talent.”
The way I look at it is similar. Once, you were either working in the media, or you weren’t. The gulf between “media” — with an audience of thousands, even at a smalltown paper — and “non-media”, was huge, and binary.
Now, weblogs go a long way towards bridging that gap. They’re not replacing Big Media — nor do I expect them to. But they’re filling in that huge cliff that used to exist between “out” and “in”. Now, the spectrum begins with the handful of bloggers who just yesterday signed up for a new account at Blogger, and have a few friends reading their weblogs. It extends up through me, with my small readership; it goes up to people like Stephen Green; an amateur, unpaid writer who nonetheless has several thousand visitors a day just because he’s that good. And then you start to hit the Mickey Kaus level, and Andrew himself — pro journalists, but bloggers also.
And at that point, you look around and realize that somewhere you crossed a readership line — and that now you’re looking at weblogs that probably have more actual readers than many “real media” newspaper columns. But it’s never quite clear where that line was.
Where once there was a jagged cliff to be climbed before one could be accepted into the Masonic club of journalism, now there is a gentle slope. Start small; learn the craft as you build your readership. And someday you might find yourself far enough up the hill to make the transition to Real Media.
Or, you might find that the distinction no longer matters as much as you thought it did.
Unless of course, you want a paycheck. But that’s another subject….
Yourish.com vs. Slate.com
Ah, metablogging! Is there anything so sweet?
No, not metablogging, this metablogging.
Andrew Sullivan, ornery individualist journablogger extraordinaire, is holding court on weblogs over in Slate’s Webhead dialogue this week, with Kurt Andersen of the late, lamented Inside.com set up to play straightman. It’s an interesting discussion thus far, and one that is sure to provoke much gnashing of teeth throughout the Blogosphere.
Meryl has beaten me to the punch by drawing first blood against the Slate Two, so much of my commentary is, in fact, going to be meta-meta-blogging (which of course means its twice as fun!).
Sullivan wastes no time, bashing blogosphere patron saint Rebecca Blood in his very first paragraph. Well, technically he bashes her book in the first paragraph, and only bashes her personally in the second paragraph, but close enough.
Sullivan: “Rebecca Blood, who wrote one book and introduces the other, oozes alternative-weekly, grass-roots-loving piety. Her ground-breaking definition of a blog is: “a coffeehouse conversation in text, with references as required.” Why does the word “coffeehouse” send me running for the exits? Worse, she can write earnestly about a Weblog “community.” Aaagghh”
Yourish: “Rebecca can write earnestly about weblogging communities because so many of them exist. A quick look around the Internet will show that. Sullivan is a perfect example of the kind of blogger that permeates the blogosphere these days: Ignorant, unknowledgeable about anything save his narrow little slice of blogdom (and that not much), yet thinking that he has been informed from on high as to exactly what constitutes blogging. It is exactly the thing that drives me crazy whenever I read something like it on any blogger’s site. Here’s a clue, people: There are thousands of blogs out there, and just as there is no one way to write a book, no single person has the claim to the “right” way to write a blog.”
Bear: Advantage, Yourish! Sullivan is at his worst (and, occasionally, best) when throwing out snarky, from the hip insults just-because-he-can, and here they overwhelm any semblance of a point he might have had. The right point to emphasize was Meryl’s: that there’s no one right way to blog, there’s a million right ways. If Rebecca claimed to have the One Truth Path, then she deserves what she gets (I sincerely doubt this, but having not read her book, I can’t say). But regardless, Sullivan blows it; instead of taking the rational route of simply pointing out the advantages of his own favorite mode of blogging (the ornery individualist), he overshoots and assumes that because he doesn’t value community-style blogging, it must be worthless. In his own words: “Aaagghh!”
Next round: Does Sullivan still not get the linky thing?
Sullivan: “The critical language of bloggingthe hypertext links to other Web pages, for examplecannot even be translated into book form”
Yourish: “Speaking of linking: You don’t get blogs, gentlemen. You refer only to the professional journalists or celebrity bloggers; you link only to the professional journalists or celebrity bloggers (hands up, anyone out there who can find a link to Rebecca’s website or either book in that Slate piece); you talk with respect only of professional journalists, celebrity bloggers, and Glenn Reynolds; and you denigrate the rest of the bloggers who do get blogging, and who’ve been getting it for longer than you.”
Bear: Advantage, Yourish! Not linking to Rebecca— one of the main focuses of their discussion thus far — was pretty inexcusable. And Sullivan’s focus on celebrity bloggers (“Moby has one, and so does Michael Barone”) is, on the whole, tiresome. And that’s from somebody who likes Moby. Update: Yourish.com gets results! Slate’s Chris Suellentrop emailed Meryl to let her know they were adding links for Rebecca’s site to the original article — and they have now appeared! Actual Bloggers: 1 Guys Talking About Bloggers: 0 !
Not to be outdone, Andersen tries to match Sullivan, but I don’t think he’s quite as cut out for this line of work:
Andersen:”Year-rounders in a seaside resort who both need and mock the tourists and ooze alternative-weekly, grass-roots-loving piety. Well, yes; exactly. And that is a function of geography: The three capitals of Coffeehouse America are San Francisco and Seattle, not coincidentally the epicenters of the digital revolution, and Cambridge, where The Weblog Handbook and We’ve Got Blog were published. So, agreed: We don’t need to say much more about either of these books, which seem pretty deeply unnecessary, as you suggest. And so much less interesting than the phenomenon they aim to explain and exploit. “
Yourish: “Let’s see. San Francisco and Seattle, those damned lefty cities, two “deeply unnecessary” books…And you’re calling bloggers smug?”
Bear: Advantage, Yourish — but with points off for missing the opportunity to bash Andersen for his bizarre focus on the cities of publication of the two books in question. “that is a function of geography”? Ha-what? It’s unclear to me what might reflect a deeper lack of understanding about such a fundamental aspect of the Blogosphere (its planetary, distance-removing nature) than to find meaning in where the publishers of books about it happen to have their offices.
All that said, the Slate discussion is not without entertainment value, and Sullivan does raise some good points. He continues to be the Blogosphere’s best defender, admirably, of the position which I hold dear: that every blog is an island unto its owner, to do with as they please, and that efforts to establish ‘community standards’ should be pilloried and mocked wherever they may be found. And the pair get many of blogging’s other salient benefits right: the enjoyable and useful practice of fact-checking Big Journalism; the unmediated, direct feel of even professional journalists’ blogging; and the immediacy of blogs that, as Sullivan rightly points out, is both their strength and weakness when it comes to reporting (and punditizing) on the day’s news.
Meryl closed her post by wishing that “the next time Slate wants to have a discussion on blogs, they’ll use two people who have an understanding of the medium.” I think that’s a tad harsh — Sullivan, at least, understands one form of the medium better than practically anybody else. But Slate should have provided a counterweight to his journablogging heavyweight status. Picking a non-journalist, lesser known blogger to complete a trifecta with Andersen and Sullivan would have made the discussion deeply more interesting.
Oh, and memo to Jacob Weisberg: there’s plenty of good choices, but if you’d like me to do it, feel free to call my office. I work cheap.
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Dissing The Secret Service
Hmmm. Gotta take the InstaGuy to task briefly, I think.
He the growing big media coverage of the failures of the Secret Service as an organization, which he’s been long ahead of the curve on. But his closer troubles me:
“Question: If the Secret Service can’t protect the White House adequately, why should we think a Department of Homeland Security can protect the whole nation? And if, as earlier incidents suggest, the Secret Service can’t do its job with a proper attitude regarding individual rights, how can we trust less-elite entities?”
The note of caution is appropriate — to a point. I’m no huge fan of DHS as its currently proposed, and I don’t particularly trust it. But Glenn’s criticism is so broad that it seems to suggest that we can’t possibly trust any government organization to protect the nation.
I suppose that might be true, but it certainly raises the question of what the alternative is.
Update: To clarify my point, I think my objection is best demonstrated by Glenn’s statement that the Secret Service “can’t” protect the White House properly. It’s not that it can’t — it’s that it isn’t. Identifying specifically why, and fixing it (and not making the same mistakes in IHS) is the name of the game. If we really are concluding that our government institutions are just inherently incapable of protecting us, then we’re in far worse shape than even my pessimistic views would suggest…
Big Brother: Blogger Style
So is anyone else in the Blogosphere addicted to Brother 3?
I know, it’s crap. But it’s fun crap.
I used to watch the first season of the show, which was a complete train wreck. The pacing was awful, bad editing, and the cast nearly walked off the show. It was glorious in its awfulness, though, and was weirdly, disturbingly compelling viewing.
The second season, I missed entirely.
But this season, I’ve been following closely, and it’s the best yet. They’ve finally got the pacing right; limiting broadcasts to three nights a week and ensuring that there’s always something interesting happening. And the cast this year is fabulous — not too annoying; not too nice. Just right.
Which of course leads me to wonder: Why doesn’t CBS have the ‘houseguests’ blogging?
They’ve already got a paid service where you can watch all the video feeds; why not also give each houseguest the opportunity to write a blog? The fans (and there are a lot of them, I think) would love it.
The other idea to think about, naturally, is not to make the houseguests bloggers — but to make bloggers houseguests!
Imagine it:
- Lock twelve bloggers in a house with only one Internet terminal.
- Each day hold a competition to see who gets access to it for the day — and nobody else gets to touch it!
- Every week, bloggers across the Blogosphere vote to evict one of the houseguests, online.
- Last blogger standing gets the Grand Prize: A free subscription to the Blogging Network !
If there are any CBS programming execs reading, feel free to call my office and we can discuss terms.
Blogging for Dollars
Well, I’m a bit behind the curve on this one, but it seems an issue worth weighing in on. The Network has launched an innovative service to allow bloggers to charge for access to their content, and the Blogosphere is much atwitter over this bald threat to civilization and Our Way Of Life.
First, a reminder of a few of my basic principles:
Diversity in blogging is good. Conformity in blogging is bad. The last thing we need is 500,000 blogs all written in the same style with the same business model.
Thou Shalt Not Tell Thy Neighbor Blogger What The Hell To Do With His Blog. Anybody who criticizes another blogger for the way they go about their business (other than, say, flat out libel or other crimes) should get stuffed. It’s your page; do what you want with it.
So, with that said, how do I feel about the Blogging Network?
Ambivalent, honestly. I enjoy DailyPundit, and so I am bummed that part of Bill’s content will no longer be part of the completely free-and-open part of the Blogosphere. And similarly, I’m sure that many other fine bloggers are on the network’s list that I’m just not aware of. Their decision to go “behind the wall”, so to speak, has to be classed as some kind of loss to the non-paid Blogosphere.
On the other hand, I hesitate to condemn any effort that might actually result in blogging being a viable economic activity. Like every other blogger, I sure wouldn’t mind being able to earn income for my time spent blogging — or at least cover hosting costs.
But on the third hand (sorry Larry, Jerry) — I’m rather skeptical that the network will provide anything more than very minimal income to the vast majority of its bloggers. And for the high-end bloggers — well, they could probably do OK on their own without the help of the network.
But: Bottom line is, it’s a worthwhile experiment, and I wish them luck. Let’s see how it goes…
PS – By the way, to the fellow hiding in the back of the room who’s about to get snarky and point out the irony of a guy running a standards initiative saying that “conformity in blogging is bad” — conformity in content and approach, you nitwit. Technical standards are all fine and good.
Late Update: Owen Strawn pointed out that I had implied “David Niven” above instead of “Larry Niven”. I’ve corrected the error; I await the knock at my door from the Geek Police to take away my membership card… the shame of it!
We now return to our regularly scheduled…
Well, the last week has been nuts; real life stuff and the launch of the project all at once. The RL stuff has calmed down though, and as for BlogMD, it is off to a great start — go check it out if you haven’t already, and join in the fun.
Anyway, seminormal blogging over here at TTLB should resume shortly; you have been warned…
-NZB