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Archive for the ‘Blogophilia’ Category

Dextrous bloggers’ least favorite “righty”

Posted by Ron Coleman on November 13, 2008

Ouch.

I have to admit I hadn’t expected he’d come in number one.

Posted in Blogophilia, Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »

It turns ugly

Posted by Ron Coleman on November 3, 2008

Not them, us.  This is the issue I’m going to ponder, right up front, during the cold nights of exile.

The majority of the comment section to a piece I wrote, and which was linked to by Instapundit last week, was so outrageous, insulting and over the top — as well as mainly utterly non-responsive to what I wrote — that I did something I never did before and just shut down comments.  I don’t mean people disagreed with me.  I mean that most of them were nuts,  or at best seriously misconstrued what I said and savaged me for it.  Others invented quotes by me or by Obama, and one accused me of “pandering” — pandering?  What’s the idea, that I think of myself as in line for the ambassadorship to Williamsburg?

The know-nothing Right is out there, reading, and it’s fair to say that while it’s usually been easy to link to Daily Kos and find stuff for the Left to be very embarrassed about, we have more than our share of dingbats, loonies and the tinfoil-hatted too.  (In fact I think we are the better off, for we are in fact embarrassed about it.)

I wouldn’t have even bothered to mention it… save for the fact that Glenn couldn’t resist sharing one of his own specimens of a the exact same species just now, too.

Glenn Reynolds and I are seldom mentioned in the same breath, but one thing you can say is that we are not ideological twins.  But we’re both pond scum to a certain sort of blog reader, and for the same reason:  We try, as many do, to focus opposition on legitimate issues, not demonization.

For some people that is just not enough.  What is to be done?

Posted in Blogophilia, Politics and Poker, Stragety | 7 Comments »

Now this is scary!

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 31, 2008

Instapundit:

IN THE MAIL: Sarah Hoyt’s Gentleman Takes a Chance. With a nice cover-blurb from Jerry Pournelle.

UPDATE: Sarah Hoyt emails: “Thank you for the mention in the in-the-mail. I check instapundit first thing every morning for news and it was a wonderful surprise.” And so was this email, as I had no idea that Sarah Hoyt was an InstaPundit reader.

Well, you realize what he’s telling us, don’t you?

HE KNOWS EVERYONE ELSE WHO IS AN INSTAPUNDIT READER!  And probably also what we’re wearing when we read it.  He’s surprised that one of us temporarily eluded his grasp… or maybe he just wants us to think that so we’ll do something stupid!

Which of course we won’t.

Posted in Blogophilia, Jocularity | Leave a Comment »

Dean Barnett

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 27, 2008

Dean Barnett has passed away.

Posted in Blogophilia, Heart and spirit | Leave a Comment »

Email lists?

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 25, 2008

What’s all this about email lists?  Isn’t this the 21st century already?

I have no idea how many people read this blog, because there is no way to know how many RSS subscribers there are.  At one time WordPress did offer this data, and then stopped for no coherently expressed reason.  But let’s just say that, maybe after a year and a half and a few nice bumps from time to time, and notwithstanding the uninspiring but fairly useless rankings of both N.Z. Bear and Technorati, we have a little bit of a following.

Does that mean that it’s fair to assume that I want you to subscribe me to your daily email — essentially a push blog I never asked for?

Hint:  NO.

Posted in Blogophilia | 2 Comments »

Paranoid? Try this.

Posted by Ron Coleman on October 20, 2008

The polls could be wrong. There could be a split between the popular vote and the electoral college vote. Obama Barack could end up losing the election.

But let’s say he doesn’t. Given what we’ve seen about a willingness to use the state to enforce opinion from Barack Obama (not that John McCain is blameless)… and the mainstream media’s contempt for citizen journalism… and the preposterous extent to which, by all accounts, the MSM is not only in the tank, but unconscious at the bottom of it, for its messiah…

Would you want to be a blogger, much less a — how shall I put it? — right-wing blogger, after the revolution?

Of course you would. There would be nothing cooler, funner or, for most of us, nothing that would be a better way to participate in the marketplace of ideas and perhaps make a difference in opposition to what could be the most left-wing administration in history. The frisson of “danger” only makes it ginchier, because in fact as conservatives we have confidence in our Constitution and fundamentally the institutions that make it work and survive, notwithstanding our frequent disappointments. Unlike left-wing crybabies who threaten (always with no intention to follow through) to run for friendlier peoples’ paradises if this or that Republican is elected, we are here, we aren’t going anywhere, and we aren’t trading in our bloggin’ pajamas until they blade it off our cold, green corpses.

Good.

Now what are you going to do make sure it never comes to that? Now, given your faith in the Constitution, how are you going to act, to advocate, to engage — if I may use the word? — collectively to make sure alternative media, a concept once considered the sole property of lefty S&M and “escort service” shopper newspapers like the Village Voice and the Chicago Reader, remain vibrant, fearless and online 24/7?

Well, I am biased, but in view of the horizon before us… I would recommend membership in the Media Bloggers Association.

The MBA is non-partisan – its members, board and history are ample proof of this. The MBA is, to some extent, the institutionalization of a dynamic that is anathema to many bloggers: Joining organizations, agreeing to standards (not standardization), bestowing a limited quantum of representative proxy, and interacting cooperatively with people like the MSM, the courts and others whom many bloggers consider sacred cows.

There will always be the ACLU, the EFF and many fine organizations — not all of which are conservatives’ first choice of whom they’d want to call in an emergency — and individuals who are out there fighting the good fight. But right now the MBA is the only grouping of bloggers across the spectrum that is in a position to protect, and is formed for the sole purpose of protecting, the rights bloggers have to express themselves in their chosen medium to the full extent of their constitutional rights to do so.

If you’re as afraid of an Obama Administration and how it might go for bloggers as some of you say you are (which is a lot more afraid than I am, notwithstanding the scare links in my first paragraph), you’ll consider joining the MBA or perhaps replicating what it has done in a manner consistent with your own tastes — “while you can”!

If you’re not afraid but, like me, you have your concerns… there’s no rush. But you should check us out. Just in case.

Posted in Blogophilia, Medialites, Politics and Poker | 6 Comments »

Blogging for non-bloggers…

Posted by Ron Coleman on September 23, 2008

… is not blogging.  As B.L. Ochman explains:

With alarming regularity, most recently yesterday, I get inquiries from companies who want me to create a blog for them – usually for the CEO. And nine out of ten times, I talk them out of it.

Read this.

Posted in Blogophilia | Leave a Comment »

Plus ça change

Posted by Ron Coleman on September 3, 2008

Rosemary Kondraciuk, once known as Rosemary Esmay, and who has moved a few things lately, has moved, redesigned and renamed her blog.

While she is still unquestionably the Queen of All Evil, her blog is now called The Change, and you can find it here.

Good luck, your majesty!

Posted in Blogophilia | Leave a Comment »

Stout, rested and ready!

Posted by Ron Coleman on August 26, 2008

The Stout Republican is back!

Posted in Blogophilia | 1 Comment »

Imagery Award for August

Posted by Ron Coleman on August 19, 2008

John Hawkins on Roseanne Barr’s blog follies:

[P]icture Kos sitting down to write for a couple of hours, but getting drunk first and then having a complete mental breakdown. Ok, now you know what Roseanne’s blog is like.

Of course we’re mostly grateful he didn’t ask us to picture… Roseanne Barr.

Posted in Americana, Blogophilia, Politics and Poker, Sisyphus | Leave a Comment »