i don't need Baby Jane

i find it not just odd but tacky. what with the guy's alleged demographics (if you know what i mean), this is her macaca or sambo moment.

as terrance has been saying, it's a good thing. there's a record of who really is out there calling themselves progressives.

I love blogs when they stay on message. I hate blogs when the people who run them inevitably use the internet to prose, preen and "show their ass", like granma used to say, and in that way stray from the bigger topic at hand. Liza's hand was tipped when she bitched that *she* wasn't invited to slurp cocktail weiners with a celebrity. Pathetic. And ugly. Jane, (and John Aravosis, for that matter) make me CRINGE everytime they write vanity posts crowing over their latest, greatest accomplishments...nothing like tooting your own horn. Well, actually, nothing more offputting. I could do without the souvenir pics of celebrities and vacation spots as well, to tell the truth.

one thing a successful writer learns, whether that success is local in a small town or national, is they represent the thoughts and feelings of their readers. i am constantly congratulated for my letters to the local paper; read by a few thousand people, the words strike a chord with friends and neighbors. i have the ability to use words to say what others around me are thinking and feeling. i never write with that in mind; it's just a fact of my life that i am in tune with so many people here in Corvallis.

Liza & Lorraine and a number of the writers here at CK are in that same position. the website is doing well because the writers here speak for their readers. i don't mean this as in "preaching to the choir" (although any successful advocacy writing will always have a lot of that gong on). when Liza discusses the activities she's involved in, or shares her observations on events surrounding her life, it's not a solipsistic exercise. it's what writers do. no, she doesn't have the audience Jane has (who also speaks for many), but she dos have a readership because there's a connection that's real and legit.

to be a good writer, you have to have a certain arrogance. actually, a shitload of arrogance. you have to believe that when you sit down and the keyboard and start poking at the keys — and later, when hit the Submit button — that your words actually matter. i may have an audience of two or one or none here; but i persevere regardless. Liza is not being pathetic to critique the blog gathering; she's representing a perspective, a small piece of the world shared by herself and a number of others. she's right to report on this view; she has a duty, as a writer, to do this.

which is why Jane, who has had the good fortune to see FDL grow from a hopeful exercise on Blogger to a nationally recongized news & infotainment site, was so wrong to attack Liza as she did. underlying her original post was the idea that she, in possession of Truth and Accuracy, Must Tell Poor Liza How Very Wrong She Was. rather than take a positive approach — private message, explanatory post sans snottiness — she deigned to piss all over Liza. and then she defended herself by blaming Liza for starting.

so yes, blogs do become about the writers. i don't recall Liza ever saying she wouldn't be a major player in the narrative. i, for one, dig it. her life is so different from mine; she can write about herself all day, and i'll be learning all kinds of new things. most of my posts to Blue Oregon are about me me me — and they work. they generate comment and thought and productive conversation. the real sin is not to write about yourself; it's to write about nothing.

This post wouldn't load for me all morning, but at long last it's here!

I don't get Jane Hamscher. To me she's to blogging what the daily Zippy strip is to million of comics readers every day - something you just look at and shake your head. She's not saying anything that you couldn't find somewhere else.