Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Tonight, we're gonna party like it's 5765. But first, this message. Blogs are a personal medium. Unsurprising, then, that bloggers often take things personally. Even the biggest players still smart at things said by strangers -- witness the Reynolds/Neiwert and Winer/Kos/comment posts below. Recently I found (via Technorati) that a blogger of whom I had never heard had written that I had not covered the massacre of Russian school children because the event "might show everyone why we need George Bush for four more years." Worse, this evidence of my "manic and unyielding hatred for the president," showed that I had "lost some of (my) humanity." So I emailed the guy. Said I didn't think that Beslan was in any way an argument for Bush, that of course as a father and a reasonably decent human being I was horrified by it, and that there are all manner of big stories that I don't cover if I don't think I can add anything to them. I didn't use Kitty Kelley's Bush-bashing new book as an example, but I could have. And the guy wrote me back, and said he was sorry. And dumb as the whole thing was -- the original rant, my concern over the words of a stranger -- that connection, that conversation, made me feel better. Happy New Year. 5:18:44 PM    comment []

Baghdad Burning: "Three years ago, Iraq wasn't a threat to America. Today it is." 12:22:51 PM    comment []

John Robinson, editor of the News & Record: "(T)he sooner newspapers realize that blogs aren't going away, the better...This one is all of three weeks old, and I already can't imagine not doing it." 12:06:21 PM    comment []

Mr. Sun envisions Glenn Reynolds as a porn star: "You are viewed obsessively by an intense group of people who are contemporaneously manipulating their input device and evaluating how they might connect to your positions." I'm kinda sorry I read that. 10:33:02 AM    comment []

Kos disagrees with Dave Winer about comments on blogs. A conversation follows in the comments section of Kos' blog.  I like having comments at this blog. The whole Kos/Winer thing started with this interesting article in OJR about comment spam. 10:20:23 AM    comment []

"Republicans raring for 'skin to rip and blood to flow' in the North Carolina Senate race are about to get their wish. So says Rep. Richard Burr." The Hill says Burr is going to start swinging hard at Erskine Bowles: "As the race heads into the final stretch, Burr is mobilizing for a full-frontal, multimedia assault on Bowles." Writer Peter Savodnik points to the same inconsistency of message between Bowles and Governor Mike Easley that Duke's Mike Munger identifies for Burr and Ballantine. UPDATE: I reread this article and found some disconnect between its more dramatic quotes and the issues articulated by the Burr campaign in the same story. It's a matter of tone -- and we'll find out in the next several weeks what the tone will actually be. 9:47:40 AM    comment []