Pardon me, sir, but do you blog to the left, or to the right?

Got an interesting comment below from a longtime reader who goes by the tag 'vachon'--I excerpted a bit from Taterman's talk about why he blogs, and she had this to say:

Ok, I'll admit it, I read the "A List" left political blogs. I even type my 2 cents into their comments sections. Let's face it, the South is not known as a hotbed of radical treehugger/pinko/commie/veggie politics and as you know, I'm a bit left of Ho Chi Minh.

But I also cuddle up to your blog every day and I have met a number of terrific AoW-ers that have gained a spot on my favorites list. (See, we're not always pedantic and insufferable). Shucks, you'll always be on my A list.

::blush::

Anyway, aside from once more having to send someone a bribe for being nice to me, vachon's comment about left/right blogs is interesting and one vachon and I have talked about before. Seems ridiculous to have to say it, but it is possible to folks to disagree. AND possible likewise to not feel that if you don't get your way, it's time to get out the papier mache heads and the drums and start burning down a few McDonald's restaurants.

Read enough of the stuff on here and you will find out I think a big group of folks who call themselves leftists or liberals or whatever are on the intellectual level of my 13 year old daughter. Petulant, illogical, rash, naive, narrow-minded, blindly earnest, desiring of an easy lie in place of a hard truth. And completely devoid of a sense of humor.

And in fairness, vachon sees the same thing when she looks toward the other side.

BUT.

At some point in there, you meet folks who, despite believing things you yourself know to be wrong or stupid or illogical, at the end of the day you don't mind a bit them coming over for supper, or going to the store with you, or coming in to shoot the breeze.

Why?

Well, part of it is because they have figured out that it's a lot easier to be happy when you can laugh at yourself and you can overlook the faults of others. And, part of it is they have figured out that sometimes the folks who do agree with them can be pedantic and insufferable, and they are just as put off by it as you. Still another part of it is that every once in a while, they will concede they might be wrong about something.

There are actually a LOT of people out there like that, but many times the only voices you hear are the statistical outliers and the ones hiding over under the end points of the bell curve. One of the best things about so many people having access to a computer is being able to read a wide variety of opinion. Opinions undiluted by the restraint of selling soap or ironing boards; or by an editor's false assumption that "balance" means for every opinion, there is an equal, opposite, and equally valid counter opinion.

Blogging has allowed a much wider audience to begin seeing the aberrant nature of the loudest, most strident voices--voices the media seem to gravitate toward, perhaps to reinforce the drama inherent in strongly conflicting opinion. (Drama being just the thing to get folks in the door so you can sell them gutters and vinyl siding and a two year subscription package.)

In any event, one of the great promises of the current snappy exchange of information available online is that hopefully individuals can make decisions with a better understanding of the question at hand, or at least the reasons why others may feel it to be important. Lots of individuals, blogging their little fingers off, may not be a world-changing revolution--I'm not enough of a forward-thinker to know (not to mention forward-thinking gives me a headache). Maybe, blogging's promise is only a more technologically advanced way for folks to talk to each other about cats.

I kinda hope it turns out to be a little of both.
posted by Terry at 11:45:00 AM