Like I Need Another Blog
I just announced the plans for this site on LitKicks. So I’m really doing this? As I put the final touches on my initial (and very primitive) WordPress theme, I feel strangely dizzy. Why on earth am I creating a new blog? I’m not busy enough already? Then I turn on the TV news and I remember why.
Somebody said this to me: “Why do we need another political blog saying the same old stuff?” Strangely, I don’t hear anybody saying much at all. Of course there are many well-written political blogs (I hope to engage with some of them here) but only a few have broken out to a larger readership. There’s The Huffington Post, which I like a lot — but the Huffington Post has a fast-moving, fast-talking style that is not conducive to in-depth political discussion. I sometimes post to Daily Kos, and of course I admire this blog’s flair for organization and activism. But Daily Kos is very much about electoral politics, and the site is currently so focused on the 2006 midterm elections you can’t get a good conversation about the war in the Middle East going there if your life depends on it (Israelis and Palestinians don’t vote in Tennessee).
I’d like to search for great political writing and link to it here, and I promise to link to the best pieces I can find, whether or not I agree with their points of view. I’m hoping to find the same level of intelligence, individuality and taste for controversy that I’ve already found within the online literary scene, where I have spent a lot of time. I’ll probably write a few essays and maybe an occasional history review (or History Channel review) or opinion piece, but most often I plan to use this space to respond to other political commentators and journalists, both online and off.
And I guess that’s why I’m not worried that this blog will take up too much of my time, because I already spend a lot of time commenting on what other political analysts say or write. But, until now, my commenting has taken the form of screaming at my television, pounding my mouse angrily on the surface of my desk or shaking my head in silent disbelief as I peruse the New York Times. Starting now, I’m going to put my reactions into words. And that, I guess, is why I need another blog.
Thanks for visiting, and please be patient with me as I figure out exactly what this place is supposed to be.
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:45 pm
To consider -
1. Priorities - many of the hot button issues of the day - Ilyan Gonzales, Terri Schiavo, Monica Lewinsky - are little more than smokescreens to divert attention from real issues that our corporate government doesn’t want people to talk about or know about. The aforementioned are fun to talk about, but really are little more than forensic exercises.
2. Solutions - anyone can question Lincoln, Odysseus, Bush, etc., but more utile to come up with answers, solutions to problems; more utile to discuss and share these rather than just rehashing the problems that exist.
3. Factual - anyone has an opinion and/or gut feeling; but it doesn’t take a lot more effort (now days) to check the facts of one’s argument or position. On a political blog, surely it could be redundant to say to many many contributors - “please check your facts.” Might be good to state that right off - like: opinions welcome but not if you haven’t checked your facts first. (That’s only common courtesy on the part of a contributor.)
4. Language - you’re a stickler for grammar and formal writing. In a political context people tend to get very four-letter impassioned in expressing their feelings. Guidelines?
5. Hate vibes, like David Horowitz, neo-Nazi’s, Ann Coulter; are again little more than smokescreen diversions from real issues. They may be good discussion starters, but why waste time with silliness, when there are so many life and death issues that demand our time, our concern, our discussion.
6. Ignore all the above - I’ve learned (partially from Litkicks) to tread softly on other people’s ideas; so ignore any/all of my suggestions that seem unseemly, or consider those which may have some use.
July 24th, 2006 at 3:49 am
The real issues never mentioned: 70% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck; the illiteracy rate, viz., failure of education; the millions of Americans stuck in the prison/justice system. The nightly news and the quality can be blamed on the TV viewing public\’s lack of demands for substance which goes back to the failure of education, a chicken-and-egg paradigm if there ever was one. Apathy is more likely or the demands of hustling a living cutting into quality media viewing and reading. The media are lapdogs for the elites and the masses are happy with their infotainment, besides, there are no millionaires on death row.
The solution is to do what you can: if everyone wrote their congressmen and paid as much attention to DC as they do Brad Pitt\’s new kid, would the USA really be that different? Recycling\’s the law but it doesn\’t stop wasteful packaging. The solutions of the Weathermen and Islamicist Jihad only kill the innocent but who is innocent if they don\’t take real action.