A couple days ago KING-5 sent a camera to my house to interview me for this Sunday’s edition of “Up Front With Robert Mak.” I was told the subject was blogging, and I assume I’ll be on the show, though I caught a promo last night that featured a shadowy shot of Stefan at his computer, so who knows how much. It’ll air Sunday on KING-5 at 4:30 PM, and again on KONG-16 at 10:30 PM.
Anyway, I’ve got a dirty little secret to tell, that I’m not sure I shared on camera… I don’t really read the blogs all that much. In fact, before I started blogging myself, I hardly read them at all. My main reason for turning HorsesAss.org into a blog was to force myself to write every day. (Be careful what you wish for.) Nobody was more surprised than me that HA developed such a large audience so quickly.
So I feel a little weird being presented on TV as the voice of liberal blogging in WA state, when I’m really such a newcomer to the blogosphere.
Fortunately, many of my readers are old hands, and they’re constantly pointing me towards good stuff that I otherwise might miss. For example, several readers have pointed me towards Balloon Juice, a conservative blog that has responded to the Schiavo Memo controversy and other current events with some serious introspection.
What I see going on around me is that my party is in power. We control the Presidency. We control the House and the Senate. Republican appointees outnumber Democratic ones on the Supreme Court, and we are poised to add more. We own talk radio. Cable news tends to be neutral to conservative (it certainly is not liberal or progressive- some outfits may have anti-Republican reflexes). We have all but eliminated partisan debate in congress, playing by rules much tougher than anything that was in place. Where there were once no conservative (or few) newspapers, there are now several. We have numerous conservative online journals. Hundreds of publications that all push the same point and pass on the same message.
And it still isn’t enough. Everything is under attack if it does not toe the same hard-right line. The university, the institution of marriage, journalism as an enterprise, the medical community, the legal community, every foreign institution, the United Nations- anything, that doesn’t cater to the conservative need for instant gratification in the form of message adherence and submission to the new doctronaire must be destroyed. Look at the recent behavior of Republicans in Congress towards REPUBLICAN APPOINTED CONSERVATIVE JUDGES. Forget ‘screw me once, shame on you.’ This new breed of fanatacism is “Slight me in any discernable way, even a mild disagreement, and I will publicly destroy you.”
Well, that’s the excerpt that seems to be getting the most interest from my fellow liberals, and I think it speaks for itself without further comment. But I’d also like to draw your attention to another sentiment that I think is too often overlooked by bloggers on both sides of the ideological divide. (You know… the few I actually bother to read.)
…most people who read blogs understand that this medium is by nature personal, opinionated, and partisan, and as such, each blogger should be read with the level of credibility they deserve.
Hate to sound like a broken record, but when it comes to blogging, caveat emptor.