Liberals, conservatives, and blog homage

By Jan Ireland

Those who can, write. Many who wish they could write, but cannot, blog. A lot of liberals blog. And many of those, like teenagers pushing parental limits, use blogs to try to sting resented conservatives. But when we look past the surface rhetoric of the typical liberal blog, there is the unexpected. Buried within the invective is homage. Homage to the writers they are disparaging, to the ideas they are dismissing, and to the system of thought they secretly admire, but ever remain only on the edge of. They would blog to a purple rage to deny it, but vitriol is actually their way of seeking approval from conservatives.

Blogs, or web logs, have become ubiquitous on the internet. Everybody and his brother has one. Some are mediocre, some are simply narcissistic, and some are very good. Most have a James Joyce feel. A stream of consciousness flow that allows bloggers to flit to the topic or path they find amusing. While this is empowering, their very own candy store so to speak, they don't realize how much of their own personality is revealed in their choices. The day's disparagement and the particular way it is presented reveals far more than was likely intended by the blogger. When certain topics, and especially certain people, begin to reappear in the blogs, you get a glimpse of Mr. or Ms. Inner Blogger and the particular agenda they are attempting to conceal. Another liberal attempt at obfuscation falls easily to conservative analysis.

It's amazing to see bits of your work on some blogger's page. I don't think I've ever been contacted in advance by a blogger, to say something like "look for my slime of you in the near future" at such and such site. But often I catch it in a google check of my name, or in an email from someone in my writer's group.

Predictably, liberal blog entries concerning my work are rarely favorable. Few liberals write flattering reviews of anything conservative; it therefore falls to conservatives to critique their own. Conservatives denied the platform of the mainstream media, actually fared better in development by having that obstacle to overcome. Liberal bloggers just end up forcing words into, uhm, unorthodox adjectival functions.

That "bits" are used is a concern. Only partial passages appear, and Snip is acknowledged regularly. I like to think it's a rigorous adherence to the spirit of the DMCA, rather than deliberately taking things out of context to make the point stretch to their intention. But then, that wouldn't explain how some parts quoted jump into completely random order, totally foreign to the way I left them on the page when I finished the article. It also wouldn't cover such visceral reactions to discrete words and phrases, when viewing the words and phrases as they were written would belie the blogger's inaccurate interpretation.

I am disappointed about the lack of discourse, because I'd like to correct the inaccuracies and misinterpretations. But then, there aren't enough hours in the day; days in the week; weeks in the year; or years in the decade that would be needed to correct so many mistakes. Not to worry. Conservatives always see the humor amid the "world o' crap" found in so many liberal blogs.

© Jan Ireland