Your cruel!

Freedomfighter — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 22:16:55 -0400

{The "tracking chip" mentioned in the title of this post is, I hope, an obvious exaggeration. Nobody would want that, except maybe...nevermind -- this is a blessedly non-partisan blog.)

UGH AND I FELL FOR IT!

Jane Hamsher: "Yearly Kos and the Myth of the White Male"

Morra Aarons — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:15:17 -0400

Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher wrote a very reasonable post defending the diversity of the political blogosphere. She writes:

The biggest blogger by far is Arianna Huffington, with 70 million page views per month. Markos is #2, and no amount of willingness to turn him into a white male is going to do that. Markos is Hispanic and that’s just a straight fact. John Amato and Duncan Black are straight white men, but John Aravosis is gay (and so are many of his contributors). FDL rounds out the list of top blogs on the left, headed by two women, although Pach — a Hispanic gay man — is also one of our primary voices. Digby is probably the most quoted and sharpest thinker around, and she’s a woman. I just had to roll my eyes when I heard people who don’t actually, you know, blog (and I’m sorry, but putting up an occasional post on the web site of your think tank/interest group/consulting firm’s website does not de facto make you familiar with the ins and outs of blogging or the blog world) talk about some cabal of straight white males who sit around a table and decide who does and does not get linked to.

Fine, good points. It's what Jane writes next that's more telling.

...I knew that with regard to the top bloggers, they wanted to encourage diversity. They wanted to be supportive and were anxious to find people who did what needed to be done in order to regularly link to them and give them traffic and exposure. That means several things, which Pach outlines in this post, but among them you have to post regularly about the topics that news junkies are interested in and you have to find a way to write your issues into those. It is difficult to get people to care about pro-choice, my personal signature issue.....Women and people of color have important perspectives to add to any conversation. We need more of both in the progressive blogosphere, it makes it richer and the insights deeper and more comprehensive. But Yearly Kos was prohibitively expensive (my hotel bill was $910) and that just isn’t a cost that bloggers who by and large do what they do as a labor of love can afford.

I interpret Jane's point as this: if you want to make it into the high ranks of the political blogosphere, you need to play by the rules. Write what "news junkies" want...write your issues into those." Jane's a star blogger and she's infinitely more influential and famous than I, but I still think this interpretation is narrow. Perhaps, to be a much linked-to political blogger one must play by the rules of the original (male) bloggers, but many bloggers don't want to cover such beats, and that's fine. They still have influence, and they can still be powerful voices for the netroots. They still vote, and they still cover politics. Online political citizens live and thrive beyond the small faction of uber-political blogs.

Only if we leave the comfort zones of the popular progressive blogrolls will online political action become truly effective. I think this is what sites like OpenLeft and Off the Bus at the HuffingtonPost are trying out...

Taking a cue from Edwards, too

Asa Hopkins — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:26:33 -0400

Edwards sent a DVD about his health care plan to Iowans many months ago, so Hillary's just following in his footsteps.

RE: Ron Paul at Google.

Tex MacRae — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:04:27 -0400

I looked at Ron Paul's @Google video stats yesterday.

Ron Paul most popular @GoogleTalk ever

Here are all GoogleTalk videos sorted by number of views. The most astounding thing about Ron Paul's GoogleTalk video is that it has only been on the net for TWO DAYS. Ron's video currently has 48,266 views, a number that will certainly be outdated by the time I post it. The next closest video is Hillary with less than 30,000 after having been on the web for 4 months.

Right now (3 days), the video is at Views: 58,364 - 2474 ratings. That's over 10,000 more views in less than a day!

No other Google video comes close in either views or rating. That is unprecedented.

techPresident - Yearly Kos - Comments

Your cruel!

Jane Hamsher: "Yearly Kos and the Myth of the White Male"

Taking a cue from Edwards, too

RE: Ron Paul at Google.