Over the weekend I attended the 24th annual Bowen Institute on Political Participation. The two-day event in downtown Indianapolis -- worth a mouth-watering three credits! -- presented numerous panelists from across Indiana involved in our state's politics.
It was a veritable who's-who of political science majors and graduate students. (Mainly those of us who tend to make noise and participate too much in class.)
On the first day, one topic creeped its way into almost all of the panelist discussions, one of today's revolutions or fads given one's bias: political blogs.
Yes, online journals and diaries with a political focus have grabbed headlines and affected plenty of recent change. Blogs are given credit for bringing down CBS anchor Dan Rather and Sen. Trent Lott. There is constant talk that the gatekeeper of the mainstream media is being broken down so anyone can be her own reporter, editor and publisher. It's the future of media.
Frankly, I'm sick of hearing about it. Enough glorification of the blogosphere as something more important than it really is.
Yes, I'm a hardcore blogger with two regularly updated blogs, one of which has actually helped fulfill one of my first ambitions as a columnist: creating an environment in which people of differing views can respectfully debate and learn from one another.
At http://swimminginbrokenglass.blogspot.com, liberals, conservatives, moderates, Christians, skeptics and mystics come together to consider each others' ideas in a spirit of friendship. (Those interested in joining can send me an e-mail.)
But this is an anomaly in the blogosphere.
Few political blogs embrace rational bipartisanship. Instead, readers of political blogs are sucked into black holes of constant, intense, belief-sustaining data and opinion. In relying on blogs, if one doesn't want ideas or facts that'll shake up one's world, it's easy to avoid them.
Blogs are the fast food restaurants of media and politics. Nope, no vegetables of dissent, just deep-fried partisanship and bottomless fountain drinks of sweet self-assurance.
And remember: you can't see who's cooking your burger most of the time. On a road trip one time, my friend and I stopped at a McDonald's for a quick dinner. While we waited in line an angry mother approached the counter to report "a friggin' fly!" grilled into her daughter's cheeseburger.
We still ate there, of course.
Nevertheless, just as some fast food restaurants have begun serving healthy food, there are various political blogs written by talented people capable of keeping the flies out of the cheese. Here are three of the best and most popular political blogs, one liberal, one conservative and one irreverent.
The first blog I check is Eric Alterman's "Altercation" at http://altercation.msnbc.com. Alterman is the media columnist for The Nation, a prolific author, and English professor at Brooklyn College.
One of the pioneers of the blogosphere was pundit Andrew Sullivan (http://www.andrewsullivan.com.) His writing is particularly good and he sticks more to his conservative principles than the Republican Party line.
One of the most entertaining and wildly popular blogs is that of the political gossip Wonkette, real name Ana Marie Cox: http://www.wonkette.com. She skews somewhat liberal but her real bias is for dirty jokes.
It makes sense that at an institute on political participation, blogs would feature prominently. Hopefully, though, in the future they can be used to educate and challenge instead of further the political culture of polarization and nastiness.
Write to David at
swimminginbrokenglass@gmail.com
Visit http://www.bsu.edu/web/dmswindle
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