Blogs and really-real politics

[prog]

From a nice NYT story about the 2004 political blogging scene (with photographs of Kos and Wonkette):

But at the same time that blogs have moved away from the political center, they have become increasingly influential in the campaigns -- James P. Rubin, John Kerry's foreign-policy adviser, told me, ''They're the first thing I read when I get up in the morning and the last thing I read at night.''

This is great. I have only recently started reading the hard-left blogs like Kos's during slow moments, having fun picking out the brilliant comments from the cynical mire, and was really impressed to see the Kerry campaign seeming to cherrypick these same ideas for their next public address or press conference. The above quote jibed with this observation, and makes me smile.

(Reading the Kos comments without filtration, though, is fast becoming as wanky a timewaster as reading Slashdot's, except that I tend not to get angry at them (OH MY GOD I accidentally read Slashdot the other day and all the +5 Insightfuls from a thing about the Green Party candidate (not Nader, remember) were rantlets from the Bush-and-Kerry-are-exactly-the-same camp... grr... grr... arrggh...))

Comments

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

Heh. I just re-read Ender's Game, which sort of presaged political blogs. The right voice at the right time...

[prog.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that's right... I read that book in 1996 and recalled theorizing that it contained the author's hopes of where Usenet would go. IIRC, it had some sort of filtration system where only smart people were allowed to post anything, somehow...

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

Well, not quite, though it did have a system similar to modded discussions like Slashdot. Students weren't allowed to post anything, but once Ender's siblings got themselves on their father's citizen's access, they could post on any of the common "nets," using any of the identities they created for themselves. Once people started noticing what they had to say and respecting them, they (or their identities, Locke and Demosthenes) got invited to the invite-only nets, where the people with power and influence posted for all the common schmoes to read.

It's really remarkably similar to our system, given that it was written in 1985. Orson Scott Card does a really good job of being just vague enough about how everything works that you don't get a clear picture of "heh heh, these are Usenet boards! How old-fashioned!"

[wrog]

um, in what sense is Kos a "hard-left" blog?

[prog.livejournal.com]

Because he is a Nazi Communist! Just kidding.

Seriously, I was trying to think of a phrase that expressed the outrageous (and I mean, full of outrage) left-leaningness of that blog that wouldn't make anyone accuse me of hyperbole (as if I had used "extreme left" or something) but it's obvious I failed. I'll just say "left" in the future and avoid the rankling hackles.

[wrog]

overtly or unabashedly
"liberal" or "partisan Democrat"
work for me.

"liberal" in particular has been underused lately.

I also tend to think one needs to be at least some variety of socialist to qualify for "left" --- i.e., belief in a minimalist safety net, or that labor unions and progressive taxation aren't necessarily tools of Satan doesn't really make the cut IMO --- but I guess I'm kind of old-fashioned that way.