Tag: blogging

There is no doubt that blogs are the most egalitarian form of mass communication ever to come down the pike. The only thing even close to comparable was when printing presses became practical and cheap enough for one person to own and operate. And we know what happened then…

The work of Tom Paine and his fellow pamphleteers can easily be said to have changed the world. By distributing revolutionary thoughts and ideas to a country full of rebellious souls starved for them. Starved for change…starved for a change from monarchy and despotism. Starved for a new kind of freedom.  

Well I don’t have a lot to say tonight — but given my proclivities, I’m sure I’ll use a lot of words anyway.

I’ve had a tough couple of blogging weeks.  Mostly dealing with the issue of public housing in New Orleans.  ‘Course I also got in some scathing comments on a couple of immigration diaries.  Oddly, some of my enemies and I are beginning to acquire a bizarre form of camaraderie.  Ah, familiarity breeds a whole lot of things, it seems.

It wasn’t so much that I was fighting folks as struggling to communicate, which was frustrating.  Nightprowlkitty, SuperKitty of Justice(!) does not LIKE to be patient!  Seems, though, that patience is a requirement.

ek hornbeck has, though his writing, helped me enormously when it comes to another quality I have found is necessary if one is to engage in the dirty work of real communication of ideas and information and values – often to folks who may not know or trust me – and that is toughness.

To illustrate this helpfulness, I shall link a comment and response from one of his issues of the Stars Hollow Gazette.  I had commented one needs toughness to “save the internets” and his response has become my new mantra for 2008:

You can’t expect that people will treat you in any particular way.

Yeah, this is what we do.  We are citizen journalists.  Our media has failed us — for every good reporter and story there is a tsunami of dangerously false information being fed to the American public, causing human suffering and great damage that every blogger here knows the extent of all too well.

It is in this light that I write about something which may not seem terribly important in the midst of all the big scandals and campaign goings on.  But mark my words, this is important to us — as bloggers.

The NOLA blogs have been an invaluable source of real information for me since the Federal Flood destroyed America’s illusions on how much our federal government is willing to solve national problems.  Instead we saw our federal government head straight for the cash register and give out billions of our tax dollars and overwhelming federal agency powers to corporate and political cronies.

When the Federal Flood occurred, thousands of residents of public housing were forcibly evacuated from their homes, even though the homes themselves were not overly damaged in many cases.

And they were not allowed to return.

Now HUD and politicians in New Orleans are planning on demolishing this public housing, before real guarantees can be had that folks can have a home to return to in the so-called “mixed housing” that is being proposed.

The community has not been given the chance to give real input here.  Advocates for the poor, some of whom are truly humanitarian souls and others who are rabble rousers extraordinare, whose actions irritate as many as they inspire (for after all, poor folks rarely get slick lobbyists to represent them, that costs a bit, ya know), are trying to halt these demolitions.  One of the best things I saw was a video where a man simply stated these folks had leases and their rent was paid.  Think about that.  Think about being shoved out of your apartment when you had held up your end of the bargain, and not being allowed to return.  That’s just plain wrong.

And, of course, this has, unforgiveably, gone on over two long years.

There was a good question about impeachment at my blog in response to this posting: http://rjones2818.blogspot.com…

Here’s the question:

RJones,

Do you have a view on removing all the roadblocks — as you see them — to an impeachment investigation?  

There’s a book I’ve read over and over since I was a child, so many times that I’ve memorized most of its stories.  My father and brothers also knew these stories and we’d often use them to illustrate whatever conversation we were having.

The book is entitled A Treasury of Jewish Folklore, edited by Nathan Ausubel.  It was published in 1948.

The stories are great, but Ausubel’s introduction to each section is wonderful, I think.

So I’m thinking about some of the more absurd arguments all of us get into every now and then — no, not flamewars, just minutiae unto absurdity at times, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin kind of stuff.  And I thought about the town of Chelm and the stories about the folks there.

Before I get to the stories, I’d like to share part of Ausubel’s introduction to the section of the book entitled “The Human Comedy:”

The overtones of satire, irony and quip we hear even in the Old Testament.  For example, there is the gay mockery of the Prophet Elijah as he listens to the idol-worshipping soothsayers of Baal, invoking their god morning, noon and night:  “O Baal, hear us!”  To this, the rational-minded Elijah remarks tauntingly: “Cry ye louder, for he is a god; he is perhaps talking or walking, or he is on a journey or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked.”

We also find satire and irony in the Prophets, especially in the writings of Amos and Isaiah.  With matchless skill they lay bare the weaknesses and the follies of their contemporaries.  They satirize the hypocrite, the miser, the skinflint, the profligate, the coquette, the self-satisfied and the self-righteous.  It is from this acid portraiture that much of Jewish folklore found its inspiration and themes.  The fables, parables, anecdotes and sayings in the Talmud and Midrash, as the reader of this book will find out for himself, were rich in those very characteristics with which we associate Jewish humor today.

…

The liveliness and the many-sidedness of Jewish humor make it possible for everyone to find in it that which will suit his taste.  It is a treasury in which lies stored up three thousand years of a people’s laughter.  Its variety recalls the words of Bar-Hebraeus, the Thirteenth Century Syrian-Jewish folklorist, in his introduction to his Laughable Stories: “And let this book be a devoted friend to the reader, whether he be Muslim, Jew, or Aramean, or a man belonging to a foreign country or nation.  And let the man who is learned, I mean to say the man who hath a bright understanding, and the man that babbleth conceitedly even though he drives everyone mad, and also every other man, choose what is best for himself.  And let each pluck the flowers that please him.  In this way the book will succeed in bringing together the things which are alike, each to the other.”

So onward … to the town of Chelm, and why these particular stories remind me of the kinds of knots we can tie ourselves into when it comes to arguing the finer points of any issue.

I love it when I have responded to an email, then realized I have created a blog post.
A friend sent me a piece of an article from the Richmond, VA Times-Dispatch, dealing with the Republican netroots  – or their efforts in that respect, to be more specific.
This excerpt refers to Republican presidential candidates shunned CNN’s YouTube debates:

“Republicans cannot write off the Internet” the bloggers wrote on the Web site. “If you approach the Internet from a position of paralyzing fear, you will be outgunned, outmanned, and out-raised at every turn. It is fundamentally unacceptable to surrender to the Democrats on one of the most important battlefronts of this election.”
In Virginia, many Republicans disagree that their party is behind the curve,
pointing to state legislators’ efforts in stumping for re-election. Even
former Sen. George Allen, with his blog, has stepped back into the medium that
shredded his re-election bid.
“Most Republicans want a policy debate,” said Republican Party of Virginia
communications director Shaun Kenney, who has also blogged about state
politics. “They don’t want to talk to a snowman.”
He said Republicans are not lagging behind Democrats in using the Internet,
but they are doing it differently. Republicans tend to look to pundits, he
said, which is one reason why talk radio has done so well for them. Democrats
tend to look for opportunities to be more active, he said.

Emphasis mine.
Shaun, do you realize what you just said?
Go below the fold.