Blogging is Just Writing

This is one of the more intelligent articles on blogging by a blogger I've read recently.



By ANN ALTHOUSE, New York Times
Published: February 27, 2007

Unlike a lot of other political bloggers, I started blogging with a distinct lack of interest in politics. My first post about a presidential campaign, back in January 2004, the first month of my blog, was purely an accident. I was reading The Isthmus, our free alternative newspaper here in Madison, Wisc., when I ran across a chart comparing the Democratic candidates for president.

Because I had the longtime habit, inherited from my grandfather, of reading out loud whatever little things in the newspaper happened to catch my attention, I said: “Hmm. ‘Little known fact: at 59, Wesley Clark has only 5% body fat.’ ”

My son Christopher, who was used to finding himself on the receiving end of this habit, came back with: “Should it be: ‘Wesley Clark is 5% body fat?’ ”

That cracked me up, and, instantly making the transition from old family habit to new blogging habit, I posted our little interchange on my blog. I didn’t care at all whether I was helping or hurting Clark’s campaign for the Democratic nomination. I had merely encountered something that amused me at the time. I wasn’t aiming to become a political pundit. That blog post had more to do with my interest in the rhetoric of dieting, the subtleties of language and my son’s sense of humor than with politics.

Blogging is just writing, and there is no end to the things you can do with writing. When you read a political blog, you might be running into someone like me, a solo blogger who reacts casually to issues that surface on any given day, or you might be reading the work of a writer who is pursuing an intense, partisan agenda and pushing particular candidates.

If the blog is open to comments — as mine is — there is a mysterious additional layer of writing. Who are these people who tap into another person’s readership? Some of them must be there just to pass the time interacting with other people who have responded to the personal style of the blogger. Others are much more politically engaged, perhaps to the point where you wonder whether they are part of some candidate’s campaign.

“Political Bloggers Fear Publicists Will Infiltrate Sites” was the headline for the column Alan Wirzbicki wrote in The Boston Globe last Friday. He tells us about a little incident on the Redstate blog, where a commenter seemed excessively supportive of John McCain (who is, apparently, not terribly popular on Redstate).

This moved Erick Erickson, who runs Redstate, to do a little research and discover that the commenter worked for a company with some connection to McCain’s political action committee.

“This is going to happen more and more, and blogs are going to have to be vigilant,” Erickson told Wirzbicki.

Somehow I can’t work up much fear over this. How vigilant do I need to be? As long as no one is dropping unverifiable factual assertions in the comments — trying to stir up a scandal for a candidate? — why should I care if my commenters have their secrets, their ulterior motives and their as-yet-undiscovered manipulative ways? That’s the way life is in the real world.

It’s good to have a place where strangers can meet, and it’s fine if it takes you awhile to learn what other people are really up to. The blog is a coffeehouse, and if some new commenter is actually a political operative, I think it would be fun to see how well he can take on the sharp, individualistic commenters who have already set up here, carrying on a long conversation. I bet it wouldn’t take them long to unmask and embarrass him.

Let life on the blog unfold like off-blog life.

I can understand the urge to enforce standards in the blogosphere, but my inclination runs the other way. Watching a video dialogue on the Web site bloggingheads.tv (where I regularly participate), I rankled when the columnist Eric Alterman said:

“I think it would be good if we had some sort of, you know, blogging — you know — council, where we could condemn people. ... You could still blog if you want. Nobody’s going to stop you. But ... everybody’s gonna know that you’re not to be trusted.”

What undermines my trust is that impulse to control. Those who want such things worry me as much as a candidate with too little body fat.

Ann Althouse is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin and writes the blog Althouse. She is a guest columnist this month.