Postcards From The Echo Chamber

One of the criticisms of the bloggers at the Democrat convention was that the bloggers in attendance became the celebrities. There's something to that, although I think it was more or less inevitable, given that there was no real news at the Democrat convention - the script was in effect written in April - and the inexperience of so many of the bloggers.

But there was more.

Here's one of the better criticisms of the mostly-lefty blogs, from (natch) the The New York Times > Fashion & Style > NYTimes:Perhaps the greatest achievement of the bloggers was to create what the Democrats would like to see come November — a Blue State nation. On television the party depicted itself as moving toward the center. But to follow the proceedings online was to burrow, link by link, deeper beneath the blankets of ideological fellowship. On LiberalOasis, for example, one found dozens of links to like-minded warriors, among them The American Prospect and a Web site called Class Struggle. In cyberspace, left-leaning bloggers have managed to create an America where Republicans simply don't exist, at least as anything more than useful abstractions — like Eurasia and Eastasia in "1984."This is an excellent insight.

It's a part of the criticism-slash-question the Fraters and I have been asking, "why aren't there any really good liberal blogs out there?" That's part of it; so many lefty blogs exist in a complete, self-referential, unchallenged vacuum.

Speaking of which, I'm working on a review of the lefty-blogs that Chuck Olsen and his readers have been recommending on Chuck's blog. It's taking a while; I'm having to read them all. With some, it's a genuine pleasure. With others, it's like having to clean Katherine Lanpher's bathroom after a very rough night.

And in several cases, this exact phenomenon - the complete, isolated, self-referential tone and content of the blogs, with the opposition referred to only in the most cartoonish possible sense - is a huge part of the problem.

More later this week.