Hey Bored Young Professionals!

If you’re so bored, why don’t you ever post something on your blog? You know, like the old saying goes, “Only boring people are bored.” Hahaha.

Pseudonyms

Sometimes I like to read the comments section on Waldo’s blog just to hear his funny banter with hapless Republicans who think they can get away with commenting under pseudonyms. For example, this exchange from yesterday:

Hanger will destroy Cox. That is what matters. You happy democRATS?
You can talk about the SWAC all you want, but the fact is they took a unknown and came very close to beating a incumbent. The big losers are RK and NLS….Their candidates struck out. Why dont you talk about that? LOL!

Carl Kilo
06/13/2007 7:35 pm #

Carl, I’ve taken the liberty of changing the name that you entered (”Teddy’s Turds”) to your real name. How embarrassing for you to have mistyped your name so severely. But, hey, mistakes happen, so I’ve got you covered.

Waldo Jaquith
06/13/2007 8:20 pm #

We’ve all probably made a few anonymous comments at some point or another but the nightmare realization that George Burke is the psycho weirdo “Thomas Paine Patriot” casts the whole issue in stark relief.

Crunch Time

I think I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping up with my blog for the first few weeks of its existence, so I apologize for the lack of posting in the last couple days. It’s crunch time for the primary so I’m pretty focused on spending all my free time toward that. I will have a couple posts later on today but you may or may not hear a report from the field tomorrow.

Of course there will plenty to blog about on Wednesday…

Blogs on the Defensive

Today’s DC Post has an article making Virginia blogs look pretty bad for the scathing treatment dealt to Jeff Dion. In particular, Ben/NLS has been forced to defend his posting of a link to Dion’s social networking, dating profile on gay.com.

In 2006, national blogs went so far as to post the profile of congressional candidates’ children, Tribbett said. “So for a candidate themselves to have a profile, they have to expect for it to be public game. Anything else would be ridiculous.”

Last year I was proud of NLS for breaking the George Allen video- besides revealing Allen and helping Webb it opened a discussion about racism that was good for the Commonwealth. But I fear that the treatment of Dion has had the opposite impact. This article raises a serious question that blogs have to confront. At what point do the fun and games of attack, gotcha politics morph into a really ugly contribution to hate in our society.

I’ll admit I didn’t notice the posting at the time, I rarely read BVBL because it’s almost never anything more than insecure hate-spew, and I wasn’t particularly protective of Jeff Dion’s right to be a candidate because frankly he did run poorly in the recent special election. But it’s clear now that the effect of this episode is toxic. It sends a message to any young homosexual that they better think twice before putting themselves forward as a political candidate because this is the venom which they will be faced with by anyone who opposes their candidacy for any reason. Let me be clear- I really don’t blame Ben or any individual blogger for the atmosphere (okay, maybe I do blame BVBL just a little), I think it’s something we’ve all contributed to. But this time I think we’ve really crossed a line and I personally apologize to Jeff Dion and his family.

My Blogroll

As you can see I have a list of just a handful of blogs on the right. Those are the blogs which I actually read on a regular basis in order of frequency. That doesn’t mean I won’t add others to my blogroll, just ask and I’ll add you.

UPDATE: Due to some strange problems with the WordPress software I’m unable to order my blogroll in order of frequency so it’s just in alpha order.

First Post

After years of lurking and posting on various Virginia politics blogs I’ve finally decided to take a stab at regularly posting to one of my own. I named this blog Power Concedes mostly because WordPress required me to name it, but also it’s a phrase from my favorite Frederick Douglass quote. I’m not making any promises about how often I’ll post here but I’m going to try.