Thursday, February 24, 2005

Rapping and Blogrolling: MSM Doesn't Get It

How's that for a little Bling Bling? (For Kate and Joseph Logan, who were led to bed in mid-discussion last night by, well, their cats.)

Joseph Logan from www.publicorgtheory.com leads off today with a continuation of the conversation that got so very involved here last night (38 responses is BIG for this Blog), but he first brings into it an article from Slate where Josh Levin compares, facilely, bloggers to rappers. To me, this is a fine example of how the Main Stream Media doesn't get it, and any one of you will likely blow Levin's thesis to bits easier than me. They don't know how at all to characterize the blogging phenomenon, expecially Left Blogistan. My comment on that other thread was that it was the DNC's job to figure out how to use Blogs, and I'll extend that now. The Main Stream Media is at a crossroads, and until they figure places like Atrios, Kos, ASZ and the thousands of other Blogs out there, including their place in the world, in politics, in a whole social ethos, they're going to continue with such facile and amatuer productions as Levin produced. Yes, even so "hip" a political space as Slate seems clueless sometimes.

I offer this post as a companion to the Joseph Logan thread at www.publicorgtheory.com, but there's lots that could be talked about. I don't think we have exhausted discussing metaphors, though Logan seems to have accepted my "verdant rhizome" as a metaphor in progress. If you can't compare Left Blogistan to Rappers, and we ruled out hives and packs yesterday, what group would you compare them to? Are we Freedom Fighters? Are we nomads, able to move with the wind, graze at need, and strike swiftly with little warning?

Of course, Wing Ding BlogWorld is the Borg. That goes without saying. And a stupid Borg as well.