Whenever Dean Dad writes something nice about me, I get so tickled. I always leave the link open and check back over and over just to make sure he hasn’t changed his mind.
I imagine him like some young Gregory Peck, saving the world one small right thing at a time.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Molly Ivins’s death and reading all the commentary, which can mostly be boiled down to: one of our great liberal truth-tellers has died and what will we do now?
Well, it seems obvious.
We go forward. We do what must be done because there’s no one else to do it.
Newscoma has an excellent post today about the whole Briley affair and her gut instinct that there’s more to this bill than just some third-year law student playing “I can craft legislation when no one’s looking.”
I have one Rep. and one Senator who represent my district. I’m going
to be asking about this when I head to the TPA next week. My questions
will be simple.
What is the buzz in the General Assembly about bloggers and blogging
rights? Are members of the house and senate worried about us? Who is
talking about or are we, as bloggers the only one talking about issues
like this? Is there a sense of fear of political bloggers creating a
discussion that mainstream media in the state might not be covering?
Does the political machine just see bloggers as instruments creating
“malice intent?”
Is that how they see bloggers? Being that I work in both journalism
and keep this little site on the side for my own amusement, I know that
some people in journalism are very leery of the blogging community. Not
all of them, but some. I also know that with the power of blogging’s
influence during recent elections and political scandals has created a
very big voice.
Do you see what she’s getting at?
That what we’re doing here, for whatever reason, scares people in power; that’s her sense, that what we do is making folks nervous. That’s pretty extraordinary.
I was thinking about this yesterday as I was sewing the legs on the LiBEARtarian* and I was thinking about what, aside from him being all camouflage would make him identifiably a libertarian and I was thinking that he should have a hat. And then I thought, “Well, and it’ll need to have a brim, because no serious shooter would be caught dead without a brimmed hat when shooting.”
Why the fuck do I know that? Because Say Uncle said it and it stuck in my brain.
Do you see what I’m getting at? That, I think, gets at the heart of what makes blogging so “dangerous.” Yes, it’s true that a lot of the blogging landscape looks just like the landscape out here, where people are split along party lines and one side yells at the other but the other’s not listening.
But also, here, I can make connections with people who are on opposite sides of the political fence**. And I can, at least, get a feel for where they’re coming from. And when some legislator does something asinine, regardless of what party, I can hear about it and rally and be rallied by folks who may not share my party affiliation to act against it.
I do think that’s got to be unsettling.
And I’m glad of it.
*Yes, I swear, I’m almost done with that god damn bear, which means we’re almost done with Craft Time With Aunt B.
**Shoot, I even read Nate, the Pan-Galactic Blogger Blaster, with some regularity, because I find his comments over at NiT have become remarkably sane and thoughtful lately. (Though, I think this only adds credence to my theory that he’s some kind of G-man. Ha, good thing Briley’s legislation isn’t passing. You start throwing idle speculation about a guy like Nate being a G-man and, if he’s not, he and all of those Vox Day nuts are hunting you down and beating you to death with a worn copy of The Fountainhead, which is bad enough. Imagine if he could come after me with the weight of the Tennessee legislature behind him!)
Tiny Cat Pants 