Friday
Narcissism
Two days ago, I read this James Fallows post, where he talks about what purpose his blog serves as opposed to writing he does for magazines and books, and skimmed the archives of this blog, where the blogger, Andrew, is somewhat regularly bringing specialized (historical) knowledge into his posts or otherwise writing more analytically than I've tended to in my recent posts here. This led me to think some about what I'm doing writing a blog where the plurality (almost certaily majority, but I don't want to count) of the posts consists of my reacting fairly superficially to events in recent broadly political news or linking to other people's reactions to that news.
I have a partial answer to that: I think I have a (very) few readers who aren't reading the same blogs I am or following the political news as closely as I am, and I want to share some of what I'm reading that I think is worth bringing to their attention. But I could do that just by posting links and a one sentence summary. I another purpose I had for the blog is that writing about a topic at times forces me to think more deeply about it than I otherwise would (because I try to imagine which facts I believe others would question, and look into why I believe them), but I'm not so sure posts about events that take place in the course of a political campaign really serve that purpose. For instance, say I link to Marc Ambinder's post which says, in full (odd formatting in original):
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I have a partial answer to that: I think I have a (very) few readers who aren't reading the same blogs I am or following the political news as closely as I am, and I want to share some of what I'm reading that I think is worth bringing to their attention. But I could do that just by posting links and a one sentence summary. I another purpose I had for the blog is that writing about a topic at times forces me to think more deeply about it than I otherwise would (because I try to imagine which facts I believe others would question, and look into why I believe them), but I'm not so sure posts about events that take place in the course of a political campaign really serve that purpose. For instance, say I link to Marc Ambinder's post which says, in full (odd formatting in original):
If there were a group of questionable donations all with the name AbdullahI'm not going to think any more deeply about the topic of unfair campaign coverage, nor am I going to reconsider my support, or the particular intensity of my support, for Barack Obama. And I don't think it's something that other Obama supporters, or at least the ones who might read this blog, are particularly benefited by reading, except to the extent it creates a pleasant sensation of loathing towards the people who would hypothetically turn this into a huge deal for Obama. All I can do is suggest that some people who do support John McCain should consider what they think the answer to that question is, and what it means if they think it would be a bigger deal. But no one who supports McCain is ever going to read this, as far as I know, so I'm back to wondering why I post that, or things like it, at all.
that were funneled through a guy in Jordan
who is a Jordanian national
who is under investigation for war profiteering
and it were Barack Obama
instead of John McCain
would this be a bigger deal?
