This blog got started in December 2004 because a lot of my writing had been proprietary for several years, and I wanted to get to an audience again--to readers, not just users. (Also, after the 2004 elections I was tired of yelling at my television. Viewed from that angle, my neighbors are probably glad I started a blog, too.)
That was the motive, but the content reached back a few years earlier, as sporadic rants emailed to a list of patient friends and like-thinkers. Ironically, by moving things over to a blog, I found that I write more but the original list of correspondents (who used to at least fire back a line or two in response to most of the emails) almost never leave comments on the blog. Email asserts itself in your inbox; blogs wait patiently--hopefully, longingly, wistfully--for you to visit them and say something. Plus, I suppose, those email replies to me weren't out there for the world to see like blog comments are--or at least the little sliver of the world that my readership now represents.
I always have to go back and look it up: Which did Marshall McLuhan call a "cool" medium and which was a "hot" medium--which one was the one that provided more high-definition information and didn't require/demand as much psychological/communicative contribution ("filling in the blanks") from the audience? That was the hot medium. Maybe that's it. Maybe I write a "hot" blog.
(Sigh. Gone from academia 15 years and I still seem to overexplain things. You can take the boy out of the classroom, but . . . )
Still, a number of friends continue to pitch me interesting topics like softballs, inviting me to take a swing. I often do, and I appreciate their generosity.
The original plan was to have the blog content even out over time roughly among politics, media criticism, and pop culture commentary. It was a logical fit with my intellectual tastes and professional background. (That was also the motive behind the grainy TV-like header graphic of the first year--meant to suggest a TV screen seen so close it was beginning to de-res. With the benefit of hindsight, that visual metaphor may have been a little too deeply pitched.)
No question, though, that politics has overwhelmed the other two themes for most of the first year. The list of things I meant to get to but didn't--or at least haven't yet--includes:
- Why are liberals funnier than conservatives?
- A running series to be called "Pesky Ol' Liberal Media Update"
- The death of the pop-up turkey timer inventor
- More open letters to editors
- An encomium on "The X-Files"
- More about the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments
- More about Oregon/Portland issues
But it's also because my outrage over the depredations of the Bush administration upon my country keeps dragging me in the direction I've mostly gone in the last year. More than I expected or understood when I started this blog, my writing looks forward to the end of the Bush II administration--and not just Junior himself, but all of the
apologists, advisors, Rangers, retainers, co-investors, co-conspirators, cronies, closet cases, groupies, stooges, fellow-travelers, torturers,that have been connected with him. So you can see how that could eat up a person's time.
parasites, pretenders, Pioneers, mouthpieces, enablers, users, sellers, buyers, vote-riggers, thimbleriggers, contractors, oppo researchers, smear mechanics, recess appointees,
chicken-hawks, rat-fuckers, yellow elephants, fall guys, oil men, yes-men, front men, con men, bag men, butt-boys, Daddy's boys, Bush's women,
fixers, healers, pawns, patsies, liars, cheats, thieves, crooks, felons, perjurers, traitors,
media whores, gay-bashers, strike-breakers, score-settlers, influence-peddlers, fear-mongers, hangers-on, wannabes, whack-jobs, cover-up artists, and camp-followers
Once again--thanks to those of you who read, comment, and suggest. More to come.
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