In Belated Honor of Blogroll Amnesty Day

AOL tosses the Huffington Post $315 million in linky love.

Betting on News, AOL Is Buying The Huffington Post
By JEREMY W. PETERS and VERNE G. KOPYTOFF
Published: February 7, 2011

The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news Web sites in the country, is being acquired by AOL in a deal that creates an unlikely pairing of two online media giants.

The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and announced the deal just after midnight on Monday. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. It will be the company’s largest acquisition since it was separated from Time Warner in 2009.
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Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone.
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Look up, Link down indeed.



And speaking of B.A.D, William K. Wolfrum explains why it is just a terrible idea...

Each year around this time, I'm contacted by a small cadre of political bloggers looking to push something they call "Blogroll Amnesty Day." The idea behind this day is for big, important, A-List, nationally recognized bloggers like myself to give out links to small, unimportant, D-List, not-recognized-in-ther-own-home bloggers. Beginning this year, B.A.D. (as the cool kids call it) is dedicated to the memory of B.A.D. Co-founder Al Weisel, a gifted writer and satirist who blogged under the name of Jon Swift.

Now, in theory, B.A.D. is a nice little socialist plan dedicated to encourage everyone to read Marx and wear drab clothing. Essentially, I am supposed to mention such bloggers as the angrily communistic Litbrit, or the anarchistic Fabulously Jinxed, or the angrier communisticier anarchisticier The Hunting of the Snark.

I have twice taken part in B.A.D., mostly out of pity for co-creator skippy the bush kangaroo, who has long suffered from the nightmare of ShiftandCapsLockaphobia. This year, however, I have decided I will not be involved. You see, B.A.D. is un-American. And I will not be a part of it.

My friends, since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the ownership in the U.S. media has dwindled to the point that a mere handful of major corporations now own roughly everything media related.

This, my friends, is the New American Way. Limited media ownership is what America is about. Freedom of Speech still reigns, but in a corporate-owned nation, that speech has now been bought and paid for by the select few. Independent small blogs and bloggers - such as Odd time Signatures, Freak Out Nation and Gay Persons of Color - are acting in a purely anti-American way when they try to add their voices to the limited media narrative.

...

While The left side of the Gorge persists in the pipe dream that such actions have meaning...

The good folks over at Skippy the Bush Kangaroo have posted a call for participation in Blogroll Amnesty Day, where we can call attention to 5 blogs we think are worthy of more attention. There are so many excellent blogs out there that it's hard to know where to start. Here's a handful of blogs making good contributions:

http://dadinleftfield.com/
http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/
http://thebookofcletis.blogspot.com/
http://disaffectedanditfeelssogood.blogspot.com/
http://whyaminotsurprised.blogspot.com/

And bloggers like the charmingly misguided Batocchio...

Blogroll Amnesty Day also requires shout-outs to Blue Gal, who's always promoting small blogs, and to the indefatigable Mike Finnigan, because at Mike's Blog Roundup, every day is Blogroll Amnesty Day.

There are many worthy blogs out there, and it's nice to step off the beaten path occasionally and read someone new. So here we go:

Confession Zero: Mark Prime's latest site for poetry is... Confession Zero.

Cheyanne's Campsite: Currently pondering Egypt and musing on Alexandria.

Drinking Liberally in New Milford: Lieberman is finally retiring – surely cause for celebratory drinking in Connecticut.

Failed Empire: Thoughts on American imperialism, and how to kick the habit.

Mikeb302000: "Guns, politics, capital punishment, movies and music."

We Are Respectable Negroes: "Happy, Non-Threatening Colored Folk... Even in the Age of Obama." Just the team to protect us from socialism!

Godless Liberal Homo: Yet again, the blog name sells itself – but if that doesn't sell ya, surely the post title "Boehner, Other Rightists, Trying to Protect the Fetuses of Child Molesters." should do the trick.

Welcome to Potterville 2: Currently considering the hypocrisy of Ayn Rand and Rand Paul... and also examining the recent State of the Union speech.

Mister Tristan: Reflections on long-distance running, culture, and current events.

Poor Impulse Control: I'm guessing from the blog title that author Tata is a fan of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, but Tata seems both nicer and more artistic than an Inuit assassin who kills with glass harpoons and has a nuke for a sidecar. But it's always the quiet ones...

Jill at "Brilliant at Breakfast"...

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For all that I've been working 7 days a week, 12 or more hours a day since early December, I have had time to check out a few heretofore ignored or nearly-ignored blogs, which I've just added to the blogroll. I must confess that I lack Jon Swift's generosity of spirit, for what I want to see in blogrollees is not a series of posts that simply reprint, or link to, stuff that others write. I want to see WRITING. It doesn't matter if it's about politics, or pop culture, or cats. If the writing is smart, and it's entertaining, I'm there. So in celebration of Blogroll Amnesty Day, and lifting a glass high in praise for Al Weisel, who enriched the lives of so many people who didn't even know him, here are our new blogrollees:

I Was Told There Would Be Bacon (just by virtue of the title)

We Don't Agree, But... (but often we do!)

Liberal Fix (See, Dan? I'm not an ogre after all!)

My Three Cents - by fellow NJ-5 sufferer Adam L, intrepid blogger with one cute kid who somehow manages to write at every blog you can name.

ShortWoman - because we normal-size people have to stick together.

...and at the very last minute...

of mule dung and ash - today's winner of the Ornery Bastard Promising Curmudgeon award.

Cookies in Heaven by that OTHER Jill. If there are cookies in heaven, I am SO there.

Bark Bark Woof Woof...

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So, in that tradition, I have selected five blogs that I think are worthy of attention; blogs that you may not find linked at the big places like Huffington (now a member of the AOL family) or places that get more hits on a post on a brownie recipe than they might get in a year. I chose them for my own reasons, but please feel free to add to the list via the Comments, and please take a moment to stop by and read their work.

- Cranial Hyperossification

- Fallenmonk

- Obalesque

- The Spencerian

- Why Now?

And the inimitable Blue Gal (who is -hint! hint! -- holding a fundraiser)...

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Small and newbie bloggers please be aware of the ironclad rule that you are not allowed to make "hey no blog is as small as mine" jokes regarding Blogroll Amnesty Day. The rule is, straight from the queen of the indy blogs herself (ahem), that you are not allowed to complain or mention your blog's low traffic until you have been posting daily for a year. If you're little, link other blogs that are new or still growing their audience, and encourage them to practice their craft daily. Then, show them how.

Here are some blogs from my blogroll that have posted recently. (I haven't checked their traffic numbers because I rarely check my own). Enjoy:

Reed Writes

Earth-Bound Misfit

Hysterical Raisins

Bildungblog

Actually celebrate this dangerous, communitarian hokum.

Sad, really.