Blah blah blog from the political class

Well, what do you know? Maureen Dowd of the New York Times has something intelligent to say. Kind of. Read this:

The most telling sign that the Internet is no longer the cool American frontier? Blogs, which sprang up to sass the establishment, have been overrun by the establishment.

In a lame attempt to be hip, pols are posting soggy, foggy, bloggy musings on the Internet. Inspired by Howard Dean's success in fund-raising and mobilizing on the Web, candidates are crowding into the blogosphere -- spewing out canned meanderings in a genre invented by unstructured exhibitionists.

It could be amusing if the pols posted unblushing, unedited diaries of what they were really thinking, as real bloggers do. John Kerry would mutter about that hot-dog Dean stealing his New England base, and Dean would growl about that wimp Kerry aping all his Internet gimmicks. But no such luck.

Click here.

Blogging about politics strikes me as an important contribution to the American marketplace of ideas; blogging by politicians, however, is, ultimately, so much fluff. That is, in this era when politicians generally take positions that either poll well or are paid for by their contributors, straightforward language seems to no longer play much of a role in what they have to say. I think that's the main reason that blogs have become so popular among both the left and the right. A lot of Americans are sick of the bullshit and crave some honesty.

Personally, I don't think that the so-called blogosphere is in much danger from being "overrun by the establishment" as Dowd says. On the other hand, it is worth noting that some politicians are starting to believe that blogs might very well wield some new form of political power. That’s good news for democracy.

Thanks to my old friend, Kevin, for the link.

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