Ten Blogs

That broke my heart.

Blogs may be the virtual particles of media -- blinking in and out of existence by the thousands every day, usually unnoticed -- but a few hang on, find a niche and make a lasting impression, whatever the Hell “lasting” means these days.

And now that blogging has been around long enough to have accoutered itself with its own history, lore, folkways, in-groups and all the other accretions that come with growing from revolution to an institution that has survived the loss of some of its founders, I thought the end of this fucked up decade would be an apt time to reflect on some sites which made that cut -- which conjured something out of thin air in a way that made an impression on me -- then, for a multitude of reasons including death and personal tragedy, transmuted into something else.

Pretty much everyone has such a list. And pretty much nobody writes about it, for fear, perhaps, of disturbing the blogosphere’s increasingly establishmentarian equilibrium. Or kicking off an in-house pie fight when our attention needs to be elsewhere.

Or whatever.

But I remember once-upon-a-time days when the blogosphere used to be the place where people wrote about That Which Cannot Be Otherwise Mentioned without guardrails or observing the posted speed limit.

These are the sites I wish were like they were in the days of old. But they’re not. They have moved on, or moved up, or passed away or become another abandoned mall crumbling into digital dust

along some forgotten stretch of the Highway to the 21st Century and for entirely selfish reasons, that makes me sad.

Not angry or recriminatory; they owe me nothing, and anyway, those kinds of feelings are best reserved for actual villains.

Just blue.

1. The Huffington Post: The “Number One Progressive Blog” is now a hard-to-navigate mess groaning under a load of lurid, Drudgian headlines and trivial, T&A reportage with a business model straight out of the WalMart playbook. So go team!


2. Whiskey Bar: Billmon left, and we never did find the next Whiskey Bar.


3. D.C. Media Girl: We all miss you, D.C. Media Girl.


4. Shakesville: The raucous carnival of opinion presided over by one of the blogosphere’s best writers has become less of a well-umpired barfight and more of a chantry. And you really don’t want to be in the wrong pew.


5. Midwest Teen Sex Show: One of the all-time, great, funny, honest discussions about Teh Sex anywhere. Then they decided to go big(ger). More on-camera talent. Different kinds of content. A contract with Koldcast. A pending deal with Comedy Central. They’re good folks trying hard to make it in the cold world, and while I wish them well as they make the long, hard transit between What They Were and What They Are Trying To Become, their loss of focus and bite is palpable.


6. The News Blog: Here we have the first Black President of the United States...still fighting in two wars in the middle east...copping a Nobel Prize...pouring a skazillion dollars into the pockets of Wall Street banksters...and appointing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Meanwhile, not one of the criminals that ran the Cheney Administration is in jail, and Jonah Goldberg is rumored to be getting a million dollars for his latest steaming pile of wingnut fiction.

And through it all, Steve Gilliard -- the one guy who could have maybe compassed it ‘round in a way that made sense of it all in an eminently readable form -- has the fucking nerve to remain dead.


7. Jon Swift: Terrific writer. Nudged words around with collimated light. Then tragedy. Then nothing.


8. Wolcott: When the great man was training his cannon at the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Cheney Administration, it was a spectacular, “bombs bursting in air” sight to see. Now he’s back to writing about Colin Firth’s ass, dance and pre-dawn martini raids on the ever-shifting centers of New York’s cultural gravity. The writing is still top-shelf, but y’know…


9. Fafblog: A paragraph of funny –- even very funny -- once every few months is something, but it isn’t “blogging”.


10. Group News Blog: Grew out of the hole that Steve Gilliard’s death blew in the blogosphere. Started with enough infrastructure, hope and goodwill become a major destination blog…but never really pulled it together. Built an impressive stable of writers with impressive titles…most of whom rarely/never post anymore. Still holds fundraisers.


11. driftglass: Takes fucking days to respond to a simple email. He won’t review my book. He won’t recommend my 17-hour documentary on the history of pee-berries or the noble struggle of the pee-berry pickers. Even though we’ve sent him 221 emails, he still won’t bid on the chair Howard Dean sat in when he called Karl Rove a “poo head” at YearlyKos. He won’t scrounge up enough sofa change to buy a ticket to the Grand Liberal Cruise. He won’t sign my petition to “Call Joe Lieberman on Being a Shitwhistle!”

Also, his stuff it too long. Waaaay too long.

Also writes with too much inflection.

Also he doesn’t post often enough. Somebody needs to tell him that “blogging” is now “aggregation” + Twitter; it is two-sentence links to professionals. Preferably “Media Matters”, Juan Cole, Paul Krugman or “Politico”.

Also what’s with still staying anonymous? That is so 2006!

Also apostrophes are not supposed to “droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/Upon the place beneath”. They go in specific places and not in others. Look it up.

Also, he also doesn’t take the time to respond to individual comments nearly as often as he used to, which, c’mon Drifty, is what makes blogging blogging.

Also he overuses the word “also” rather severely.