Thank you, Roger Ebert

Also at My Left Wing, Street Prophets, and Booman Tribune I wasn't planning to try to write anything tonight, given that I'm tired from working overtime all week and am preparing to attend the consecration of our new bishop. But Roger Ebert has gone and made me admire him again. I suppose some background is in order... Back in the year 2000, when the movie 102 Dalmatians was coming out, my big issue was dog rescue/humane education. Simpler times, remember? Bush had not yet taken office and made such a pig's ear of this country, so I wasn't into any sort of political activism at that point. But, being involved in a local animal rescue organization, I had become aware that a big reason dogs end up being surrendered by their owners is that the decision to add a pet to the family is often made too lightly. And with Disney's live-action Dalmatian movie coming out, people in the rescue community were bracing for a rash of "impulse adoptions" of the spotted dogs. Which would be followed, inevitably, some months later, by a rash of owner surrenders because "It just didn't work out." I don't even recall how I got the idea, but at some point it occurred to me that Roger Ebert would probably be writing a review of the movie, so why not drop him a note asking him to address this issue when he did? So I found his e-mail address, wrote to him, and in less than an hour received a quick note back, which read "I'll see if it fits." As it turns out, it did fit. And I'm pretty sure that I wrote to him and thanked him at that time. But I don't think I've ever put into words what that meant to me to have someone with such a large audience take my request seriously. That early positive experience of calling on someone who had a big enough "soapbox" to be heard and potentially make a difference is a significant event in my life story. And it was certainly on my mind as I became more involved in blogging. About blogging...it's easy to get burned out, isn't it? Or at least to have those days when you wonder, "What's the point?" or "Am I really making a difference?" Well, I don't imagine I'll ever be able to completely banish those rough times, but I'll tell you what helps keep them at bay. *Really celebrating* the good stuff--especially those moments when we make a real human connection. Like the time, after the Washington Post article was published, Maryscott wrote: One little old lady sitting at her kitchen table alone in Virginia stopped feeling so alone yesterday because of something I did; that is enough. I remember reading those words, and thinking, "A-freaking-men!" Because, that is what it's all about, and we'd be wise not to let each other forget it. .... The article that inspired this post is well worth reading. Ebert: We spend too much time hiding illness Originally, that article was going to be the focus of my post, but once I started writing, it turned into something else. And, almost seven years later, the "Thank you" was long overdue.

Markos, you're fired

I guess it all depends on what you consider to be "obscene". I'm not overly fond of "f-bombs", and tend to use them sparingly, if at all. But I'm less fond of hypocrisy, double standards, and community rules that are applied idiosyncratically. Today, Maryscott O'Connor posted a response to the Supreme Court ruling upholding the ban on so-called "Partial Birth Abortions". It was filled with righteous outrage, and, yes, there was that f-word in the title. As discussed in the post I just linked, and in this follow-up, there is no stated *rule* at Daily Kos that profanity in diary titles is forbidden, only that it is "strongly discouraged". Markos changed the title of Maryscott's diary and removed it from the recommended list, even though well over 200 community members had recommended it. Just enforcing the rules he's set for his blog? Hardly. Or at least, hardly in any sort of consistent, unbiased manner. Stormbear found plenty of evidence of diaries with that same offending word that were posted in the past year. But I don't need to delve into all of that, as a number of people already have that covered. I will say that, in my humble opinion, this is a pretty clear example of some misplaced priorities. "Naughty words" in diary titles are a big deal, but death and rape threats against a females tech blogger can be dismissed as not worthy of your serious consideration? Not worthy of *any* effort on your part to discuss what positive steps you *would* be willing to support? Now, to me, *that* is pretty darn obscene. This all came on the heels of Don Imus being fired for his racist, sexist remarks, and somebody (sorry, I can't remember who, or where) said it was too bad we couldn't fire Markos. Guess that *would* be hard to do, since we never actually "hired" him. But, be that as it may, I've seen him and his site quoted by lazy reporters as "the view from the left". So, even though I never consented to "hiring" him as our spokesperson, I hereby announce that I am (symbolically) firing him. Representatives of the media, and Democrats seeking to do legitimate "netroots outreach", kindly take notice.

blogroll amnesty day on tv!

unfortunately, it's only bloggingheads.tv...but still... big props to bill scher of liberal oasis, and conn carroll of the hotline's blogometer, both of whom are good friends to this humble site, for discussing this. bill makes one of our points which we keep hounding about...if the big box blogs don't spread traffic around, then the community will minimize and become more of a clique. and conn wonders if markos pared his blogroll in an effort to get those cut bloggers to come write more diaries on the daily kos. (for the record, it didn't work in skippy's case!) what both gentlemen failed to touch on was our dead horse of google ranking. but at least they talked about the issue as a whole (or, as some of our readers would think about it, as a "hole").

blogroll binge and purge

one of the more comprehensive looks at all sides of the great amnesty day blogroll purge that we have found is at the republic of t. (and not just because terrance quotes us three times): and there's a strange kind of schizophrenia this inspires among those at the top of the list. on the one hand, they seem to be fully aware of the power of their blogrolls, when guys like aravosis, atrios, kos and bowers hold forth at length about why they aren't going to link to some blogs. on the other they seem to deny that they hold any such power, like kos' claim that he's not a gatekeeper (though skippy says kos is a gatecrasher who's closing the gate behind him), though the "blogroll purge" is kind of like closing the gate. sure the blogs that were cut can still be found, but they won't be getting the kind of traffic that comes from having a link on kos' blogroll. and that's partially because many of the readers at kos at other major blogs are like the people i mentioned in the scenario above: they're looking where everyone else is looking, because everyone else is looking there, and everyone else can't be wrong. by extension, if there was something worth looking at somewhere else, then everyone would be looking at it already. and if they look at anything else, it will probably be what the "authorities" (to borrow a concept from technorati) tell them to look at, in the form of a link. so, skippy and the others are caught between two apparent laws of human behavior. the first was explained by clay shirky in new york magazine. the power law is dominant because of a quirk of human behavior: when we are asked to decide among a dizzying array of options, we do not act like dispassionate decision-makers, weighing each option on its own merits. movie producers pick stars who have already been employed by other producers. investors give money to entrepreneurs who are already loaded with cash. popularity breeds popularity. "it's not about moral failings or any sort of psychological thing. people aren't lazy--they just base their decisions on what other people are doing," shirky says. "it's just social physics. it's like gravity, one of those forces." the other i attempted to describe in an earlier post. when you have a fairly static system, again like the economic model mentioned above, where it's in the interest of those at the top to keep things the way they are, you have to find a way to keep the unrest of the "have nots" down to a managable level. one of the ways you do that is to (a) convince them that the peak is reachable by almost anyone and (b) make them feel better about where they are. make the middle sound better, look better, and reward them a little bit and you've created a "middle class" that's satisfied enough to act as a buffer between the top and the bottom. do it will enough and they'll continue to admire those at the top, and probably even link to them. and of course, the entire system itself must never be spoken of and it's existance should be denied. the articles states that "[t]he very subject of the a-list is so toxic" that none of the big-timers mentioned in the article would agree to be interviewed for it. as readers of this space know, we have no problem speaking about it at all, perhaps to our detriment.

Two Wolves

Image from St. Martha and Mary Parish web site Some of you may have seen me write about my "bad wolf" in the past, but I can't remember the last time I actually shared the parable or teaching tale of the two wolves. Home again after school a grandson tells of his anger at a schoolmate who has taken his lunch from him. His grandfather replies, "Sit down, my boy. I, too, have felt a great hate for those who have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But, hate wears you down and does not hurt your enemy. I have struggled with these feelings many times. "It is as if there are two wolves inside me: one is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way. "But the other wolf is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights with everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. "It is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit." The boy looked intently into his grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?" The grandfather solemnly replied, "The one I feed." The reason I'm thinking about this story again is that there are a number of people out there in the "tubes" who seem to view the internet a great big all-you-can-eat buffet for their bad wolf. Booman wrote about this phenomenon in Don't Let the Paparazzi Get You Down. I haven't had much to say about it, beyond the occasional "mean people suck" (in the comments of the Booman post). I haven't been sure if there was anything helpful I could say. But I've watched as Maryscott checked in during the Rant of the Day or Open Thread at My Left Wing, reporting on the latest hideous thing that was being said about her on another blog. I've wanted to scream "Stop! Please stop doing this to yourself!" But I've refrained--first of all, because there are plenty of people already offering that service, and secondly, because I know it can't be easy to let people talk trash about you in public without trying to refute what they are saying. So my plan was that I was just going to tune out that sort of vitriol as much as possible, and try to focus my energies in a positive direction. But then I saw the twisted delight some posters took in browbeating Maryscott for not responding perfectly to a suicide note that was posted by her friend on the front page of My Left Wing. But the point is that she did respond, and, together with some mutual friends, helped to save a man's life. And at this point I feel like I have to say *something*. So, here goes... I will reconstruct this story to the best of my ability, piecing together the information I have gleaned from several diaries. A blogger who goes by the blog name beagleandtabby posted an essay entitled which began with the words "this is a suicide note", noting that he would be dead by the time anyone read his words. He apparently posted it directly to the front page. Maryscott and others immediately setting about trying to contact beagleandtabby as well as emergency services. I can't imagine what it would be like check my blog one morning and see something like that. My best guess is that there would be a rush of emotions, panic, fear for the worst, but also feeling compelled to do something, anything to try to avert the outcome. Even though, for all I knew, the deed had already been done. Speaking for myself, I know that I don't do very well when I'm in panic mode. I get physically clumsy and I find it hard to think clearly. I believe that Maryscott handled a difficult situation competently and compassionately. She took the alarming, heartwrenching post off the front page, but left it viewable in the community essays. But she changed the title so that people who knew the poster would recognize that the essay was indeed a cry for help (rather than philosophical musings about "life" in general, which one might plan to read "later".) She also posted at Daily Kos, because some of the people beagleandtabby mentioned by name in his letter were regulars there, and she wanted to get the necessary information to anyone who might possibly be able to help. This was a true crisis situation. Thankfully, Maryscott was eventually able to report: I called his father. His father called the police for details. The police had found him in time. He is the hospital, alive. That's the good news. The bad news, you can see by reading some of the updates Maryscott has added to her "He's alive" post, a number of posters from DKos have attacked her, calling her an "emotional vampire" for leaving the suicide note up, even though. But, as she goes on to explain, IF I HAD NOT, I would not have got his last known address, which the police used to track him to where he was eventually found. The police could do NOTHING with the cell phone numbers we had. IT WAS THE LAST KNOWN ADDRESS THAT SAVED HIM. I saw the hateful comments that were posted at My Left Wing after Maryscott shared that her friend was indeed alive. Someone who had never posted at MLW before apparently signed up for an account for the express purpose of browbeating Maryscott over the way in which she responded to this crisis. I was livid. I planned to go to my computer and rate every single one of those comments as "Worthless Troll Douchebaggery", but the poster had already been banned (and those comments deleted) by the time I got home. I'm glad the poster was banned, but after such an emotionally exhausting day, Maryscott should never have been subjected to that kind of abuse. Of course, at the end of the day, the most important thing is that a life was saved, and beagleandtabby's father wrote: Words on a screen are senseless right now, but I would like to thank Maryscott for the 911 no matter what come in the days ahead. I have no plan or ideas. I only ask that those of you who know him and love him find a way to support him. In an update to the "He is alive" essay, Maryscott has reported that she has spoken to beagleandtabby. He has asked that his original post be taken down, and she has done so. She had taken down the diary at Kos earlier, because of the awful comments some people made. I've since discovered that, while the diary is gone, those comments are not. I only saw a couple of those comments, but I saw some very well fed "bad wolves". They were feasting. Think of the caricatures of Henry VIII ripping into a turkey drumstick with gusto. It was pretty disturbing. Sometimes it can be hard to look away from a grisly scene of destruction. But sometimes it becomes vital that we force ourselves to do just that. Because the more you get sucked in, the harder it can be to pull yourself away. Okay, only speaking for myself--*I* can have a hard time tearing myself away. And then I really enjoy seeing someone with a black belt in snark artfully taking down an obnoxious S.O.B. Ah, Schadenfreude--the breakfast (and lunch, and dinner) of bad wolf champions. But again and again, I have to remind myself--that's not the wolf I want to feed. And another thing--going back to that story. About that good wolf... ...one is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way. He or she is still a wolf. Still fights when it is right to do so, and in the right way. It's okay to be angry. We *should* be angry about the injustices in the world, and that anger should move us to positive action. "Good wolf anger" is a lot more likely to have that kind of positive outcome. I know this on some level, but occasionally it slips my mind. So from time to time, I'll have to remind myself, "Make sure you're feeding the right wolf."

the wizard of kos

cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs. we know that several, if not a plurality of you out there, think that our contant harping on the blogroll purges of the big box blogs is not only boring and unseemingly, but it's just plain juvenile. upyernoz specfically defends anybody who wants to shape their blogroll in any way they want. and that's a point that is not easily refuted. this is america, after all, and we believe that the founding fathers actually foresaw blogs and blogrolls in the future of this country when they added the first amendment to the constitution. ("i tell you, adams, all blockquotes are created equal!") let us assume that our audience is right, and this meta talk about getting unceremoniously dumped off of big rolls is indeed boring and unseemly. we apologize for that part. however, we maintain that discussion of the massive purges is anything but juvenile (well, maybe the name-calling part). our good buddy liberalcatnip has forwarded to us proof that inclusion on "high quality" blogrolls adds greatly to the chance that a blog post will be recognized by the google search engines. from internet marketing and search engines optimization research and services (seo by the sea): first step involved in deciding a quality score has the search engine obtaining information about a blog document. that information may be from: the blog itself, the post, metadata from the blog, and/or; one or more feeds associated with the blog document. the next step is to identify positive indicators of quality: popularity of the blog, implied popularity of the blog, inclusion of the blog in blogrolls, existence of the blog in high quality blogrolls, tagging of the blog, references to the blog by other sources, a pagerank of the blog, and; other indicators could also be used. what google says about each of those: popularity popularity could be based upon news aggregator subscriptions: a blog document having a high number of subscriptions implies a higher quality for the blog document. also, subscriptions can be validated against “subscriptions spam” (where spammers subscribe to their own blog documents in an attempt to make them “more popular”) by validating unique users who subscribed, or by filtering unique internet protocol (ip) addresses of the subscribers. implied popularity instead of explicit subscriptions, an “implied popularity” could be calculated from data collected from people searching on blog search, and examining the click stream of search results: for example, if a certain blog document is clicked more than other blog documents when the blog document appears in result sets, this may be an indication that the blog document is popular and, thus, a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document. inclusion of the blog in blogrolls blogrolls are a dense collection of links to external sites (usually other blogs) in which the author/blogger is interested. a blogroll link to a blog document is an indication of popularity of that blog document, so aggregated blogroll links to a blog document can be counted and used to infer magnitude of popularity for the blog document. existence of the blog in high quality blogrolls a high quality blogroll is a blogroll that links to well-known or trusted bloggers. therefore, a high quality blogroll that also links to the blog document is a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document. this is also based upon the assumption that a well-known or trusted blogger would not link to a “spamming blogger.” [emphasis, and righteous indignation, ours.] the article goes on, discussing other factors such as tagging of the post, position of the post on the page, etc. it's very interesting and written so non-techie schlubs like us can understand it. the bottom line is, there is no way that markos, being the i t guy that he is, didn't take into consideration the effect his roll purge would have on search engine result placement for liberal blogtopia (y!wctp!) in general. and this brings us back to our original point which we tried to make back in february when the the fiasco began. if markos, and to a lesser extent, duncan, had only dumped skippy’s humble site from their rolls, we would not be bringing the matter up over and over and over and over and over again. we would have pouted, and swore to never mention their names again, and bought some dryer's slow churned cookies n' cream and complained to ourselves how little we get back in return for the literally minutes we spend, every day, copying and pasting other people's work from legitimate news organs and then making snarky remarks about it. but what markos, and to a lesser extent, duncan, did was to injure liberal blogtopia (y!wctp!) as a whole in the arena of national media availability. it was, among others, jon swift who pointed out that the conservative blogs are ironically quite liberal with their blogroll links. and, when google searching any number of stories, you may notice that more often than not there appears a higher number of conservative (vs. liberal) blogs in the search results. now you know why. and now you know why we continue to make a fuss about the blogroll purge. it doesn't just hurt our feelings. it hurts liberal blogs' ability to be recognized in daily news searches. and techie markos would have had to have known this, if we can use the passive-aggressive voice. we have, we are sure you are glad to hear, nothing left to say about this (tho we reserve the right to kvetch later on). we want to, however, announce the addition of liberal catnip to skippy's blogroll, in our continuing amnesty day program. remember, unlike some blogs, if you link to skippy, skippy will link to you!

Accidental leadership

This excerpt comes from a particularly insightful comment by madscientist Causes left and right tend to spawn leaders, sometimes by accident. They may been someone who is in the right place at the right time. They may particularly devoted to a cause. They may become some uber-leader's boyfriend. Sometimes they just begin to be looked on as a leader. (I have no idea if any of these is true of markos.) All too often, these leaders begin to notice that people listen to them, that they have some small power. Sometimes, the new leader begins to bask in the power, or to enjoy the adulation. Or both. And sometimes, when this is the case, he uses this to create more power and/or adulation, and those who have enjoyed his leadership are only too glad to give it to him. All too often, this becomes a "cult of personality." When this happens, the freedom of thought in the cult (as it now becomes) is narrowed, and a premium is put on being with the leader. often a sort of priesthood edvolves whih not only seeks to be close to the leader, but also to be the favored to get any new dogma. then they go about making sure that everyone knows the new dogma. They often admonish or punish those with last weeks dogma. This serves to isolate the leader from the negativity somewhat, and serves his status as a cult figure. Unrest is often aimed at the second in command, who can often go mad with their petty power. Others, in this situation, try to become a priest by simply choosing to act as a dogma (or rule, unwritten or otherwise) monitor, hoping to thereby be elevated to priest. Read the full comment here.

Hug O'War

At the risk of being way too adorable, I've decided to go ahead and post this Shel Silverstein poem from Where the Sidewalk Ends I will not play at tug o'war. I'd rather play at hug o'war, Where everyone hugs Instead of tugs, Where everyone giggles And rolls on the rug, Where everyone kisses, And everyone grins, And everyone cuddles, And everyone wins I think I got it in my head after reading Maryscott O'Connor's essay Wherein I Respond to the Response to the Post Article, and I was balking at the notion that, if one is afforded the opportunity to speak to and be heard by a larger audience, one is somehow obligated to speak and behave within certain acceptable parameters. Well, a big part of the reason many of us speak out, is because we do not approve of the way the media-political "game" is played. It's not making things better for ordinary people. It's not making people better able to connect with and learn about each other. In short, powers that be, your game and its rules suck. I do not choose to spend my time and energy in a vain attempt to becoming a better player of that bullshit game. If I do find space in my life for involvement in the political process, my energies will be directed toward changing the game and how it's played. And I think another thing that brought this poem to mind was the discussion of different approaches to linking. With mutual linking, everyone wins. Even from a purely pragmatic standpoint, it's good for all of us.