Political Bloggers Crack Me Up!
Don't get me wrong.
Anybody can blog or text or tweet or write or say anything they want about politics. I do it all the fucking time. That's pretty much the foundation of Free Speech in this country.
What amuses me to no end are Political Bloggers who are, at best, big fish in a little pond who think they have a "voice that matters".
They fancy themselves to be local Hannity's or Olberman's.
They want to have an influence. They want to be a player. They like to think that when they speak, local politicians QUAKE IN FEAR!
They want to parlay their blog into a power center that can shift the political debate to forward their own agenda. They want to "matter" so much that the stench of their ambition scorches the nostrils.
Con men have always been successful because they know they can rely on their victim's greed to obscure their fraud. The victim wants the payoff SO BAD, they are willing to believe just about anything.
Political bloggers are just as gullible.
Once they get enough traffic to attract attention, the political con men move in. They get close to the blogger. They share "insider information". They make the blogger feel like they are privy to information known only to an inner circle of powerful and influential movers and shakers.
"Pssst! Hey buddy! I got some news for ya! Nobody else in town has this. I'm giving it to you. This is an exclusive! You can't fact check it because nobody knows it but you and me (...and you're not a journalist and wouldn't know how to fact check a sunny day...) and even if they did, they would just deny it. You gotta trust me! This is some heavy shit! The public has a right to know!"
The blogger, excited that they are starting to develop their own exclusive network of informants and tipsters, publishes the material.
The blogger has now become the meat puppet of any political hack who wants to advance an agenda.
They know who the liberals are. They know who the conservatives are. They know who the loose cannons are. They will use any available tool who allows themselves to be used.
The biggest political bloggers in this town are nothing more than gullible marks for professional politicos who are WAY smarter and WAY more manipulative than the naive and ambitious hacks who think their voice actually matters to anyone but them.
They are laughable buffoons with egos even bigger than my prostrate and the REAL "movers and shakers" view them with ridicule and contempt.
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6 comments:
you shouldn't be so hard on the Gone Mild guy...
; ' )
Nick - I didn't have anyone in particular in mind. Certainly not Dan.
Nick and XO - I'd hardly qualify as a political blogger these days. That said, XO's little tirade has elements of truth to it, but if anybody thinks XO knows enough about politics to know what "real movers and shakers" think or do, well, such a person would make the least savvy political blogger appear well-informed and tremendously well-thought-out. I don't say that to rag on XO - I doubt he would claim that he runs in a pack of politicos.
Political bloggers have some impact, though not as much as they'd like to think (just like food bloggers, music bloggers, etc.). They can sometimes influence the conversation, and keep issues alive.
They are incredibly fortunate to live in a city that has no skilled professional political pundits to steal the spotlight.
guys...
relax.
i was just gassing X.O.
I second what Nick says. And who else is XO talkin about but TKC?
Well, this post certainly caught MY eye, but I link to him anyway.
And I certainly wasn't confused who he was talking about. I don't know what his name is but his initials are Tony Botello. (grin)
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