Legalectric

The False Objectivity piece, by Scott Schumacher, and Can we democratize knowledge from Rob Brown, got me thinking about blogging, the purpose and uses, and I realized I regard it as I do Community Radio, not to be confused with staid ol? Public Radio, i.e., MPR, yawn… Community Radio, and Independent Public Radio too, is radio of the people, epitomized by the title of a program at KFAI run by the women?s collective ?We Want You to Know!? Good radio tells you those things you need to know, but don?t want to know ? those things you wouldn?t encounter in a typical day that shake you up and leave you twitching. Good blooging should do the same. (Does that mean I shouldn’t bore you with transmission? Naaaaaaaa, that’s stuff you NEED to know! But I probably got more people riled up before I even went online. OK, I’ll sharpen it up, bare my teeth. Manana.)

Segue back to my friend Jay, who sent the following piece from the Advocate. He has just discovered blogs, and as a 1890?s hippie faggot born in the wrong century, he is now making peace with his computer, having realized that trying to make a computer do something need not be painful for either party. This is a guy who grew all his own food in Prestigious East Phillips, a class A chef from Faegre’s and Loring, rehabbed his house mostly with hand tools, sews his own clothes ? this is a guy who a grandmotherly black woman in Richmond stopped on the street with an appreciative, ?Honey, you sure have STYLE!?

Jay?s been thinking about the power of blogs, as have I when I want to 86 the ?deals? of Bill Grant of the Izaak Walton League, or when ATC?s attorney Jeff Rauh said he found me through my blog. It?s a one person operation, cheap and easy, it harks back to the days of the early printing presses and papers that spurred the American Revolution. Could this be the advent of another? BLOG ON!

From Jay from the Advocate: Jeff vs. the bloggers. I had trouble getting to it, you may have to do a search of the title.

John Aravosis, the blogger who outed Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, the prostitute cum ?White house reporter,? regards his work as a necessary moral equalizer — here’s a quote from the Advocate:

Aravosis says he thinks a lot about the consequences of what he?s doing and that so far he is happy with the political fallout?
Asked about the ethics of outing people, he adds, ?I don?t jump up and down and say ?Yeah!? when I learn these things about people. I still feel guilty?particularly since some of them clearly have a lot of issues. But I asked my mom about it. I told her I worried about what my information could do to people, and she said, ?Do you really think someone like Dr. Laura is asking if the hateful things she?s saying against gay people are going to hurt my John? Of course not.? You are not really being nasty if you have a higher purpose of exposing people for who they really are.?

We’ve got a lot of work to do, don’t we, folks?

p.s. A comment to a post was all about dog training… cute … yes, it’s true, I am going to obedience school (Kenya is going too).