Growing Pains - I just

Growing Pains - I just got an email from a local columnist who I, to be fair, insulted last week (ironically, while voicing a very rare agreement with one of his columns). The email was sent with an expectation of privacy, so I won't quote it or name the sender, but it basically said "Oh, yeah? I know you are, but what am I?".

And the kicker was, the columnist had a point. While I disagree with the columnist involved on just about every count - his politics, his transparent bias on many issues (and his mistakenness on a few that are quite important to me) and his style of writing, I was wrong to be gratuitously insulting. (I'll let you figure out the who, what and where on your own).

I've been doing this blog for nine months now. When I started - and, for that matter, up until probably two months ago - it was a low-impact hobby, which collected about eight hits a day, mostly from friends and the occasional morbidly-curious onlooker from the Minnesota Politics mailing list. I could write like I was talking with a friend on the phone or in a bar - in my unvarnished, rather direct style. If I felt like cutting loose and insulting someone, it didn't matter - nobody'd read it!

Since September, though, my daily hit count has been booming. I've gotten a few links from some of the major blogs on the scene. I've gotten some attention from some movers and shakers, and it's showing.

Which means that I have to write this stuff with the expectation that someone outside my immediate circle of acquaintances may read it, and not do anything that I'm not going to be proud of the next day.

Which is what I'll do. There's more than enough material out there. Who needs insults when the record has more than enough stuff to ding people on?

Keillor Redux - Bruce Sanborn of the Claremont Institute has this excellent take on Keillor's tantrum, and the significance of last week's turnaround.