Sunday, April 09, 2006

Bloggerz

There have been a couple of interesting articles recently on the blogosphere (tm) and how it has developed:

- "Farewell to Warblogging", by Matt Welch, Reason Magazine, about the descent of the political blogosphere into an entirely partisan world: "Instead of galvanizing the apolitical truth squads of my fantasy world, weblogs became marvelous organizing tools for the most partisan citizens and groups."

- "The Hope of the Web,", by Bill McKibben, The New York Review of Books, about the development of the liberal blogosphere: "Each of these sites, and the hundreds of others they link to, has its own personality; if there are qualities that unite them, they would include skepticism about government claims and a tone of cynical humor about the pretensions of the Bush administration."

Note: The original version of this post had some political observations that, I've decided, belong on some other blog. However, I'll include the links I posted in the original version:

- Glenn Greenwald on "the death of shame in our pundit class."

- David Neiwert (one of the best bloggers) on the mainstreaming of eliminationist rhetoric directed at all liberals.

- Greenwald again on the rise of authoritarian cultism.

Also, in the original post, I called the pro-Iraq-war Liberal Michael Ignatieff a hack "who, if he ascends to the Liberal Party leadership, will force me to switch to the NDP." I should have added "or even the Tories" (better a Tory than a pro-war Liberal), but othewise, that observation is not political, just factual.

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