This little blog* was started about three years ago, primarily as a way to mock people.
Specifically, to parody a few bloggers who had started a website dedicated to drawing up some asinine "Pledge of Integrity", and who then attempted to pressure other bloggers into signing on, or risk seeming to lack this cardinal virtú. The pledgees, meanwhile, were violating their plighted troth with verve, if not alacrity. Subsequently, the website lost support, and eventually was taken offline. (During the Spocko affair as it turned out, what fun.)
Later, the scope of the blog broadened into satirizing other, similar -- albeit possibly more well-intentioned -- efforts, and further still into making fun of those blogs which continually behave in such as manner so as to encourage the hand-wringing of bluenoses who find such endeavors necessary in the first place, not to mention taking the occasional potshot at members of the media who exhibit the same behaviors found to be so abhorrent when committed by someone else, in a venue which they do not control.
However, since the last few weeks of the 2008 election, things have become fairly quiet on the blog-integrity front, and for good reason; It appears that La blogósfera has weathered the election pretty well, all things considered.
It seems that the 2008 democratic primary season did not irreparably divide the democratic party, or the liberal blogs. A devastating prospect predicted by many rapidly propagating soi dissant "former democrats" repeatedly expressing their concern, in comment threads all across la blogósfera.True, there are some bloggers who, by the vagaries of the election, were driven to extremes, but they will most likely pay a corresponding price in loss of credibility. Not even Dick Morris is likely to hire Larry “Agent Flowbee” Johnson, not after the embarrassing debacle of his Fake-Michelle-Obama Tape” hoax*¹.
In addition, the single other blog out there with a professed interest in the ethics of blogging has only just recently returned to active status from an unannounced five month hiatus*². Which, besides spoiling my chance to do a sort of gloating "Clap! Clap for Tinkerbell's life depends on it! No, no, wait... don't bother." post, has not otherwise been the source of any egregious offense. It appeared that the time had arrived to close up shop here and move on to other things, perhaps a new blog or an entirely new project.
Yet I have found that I am reluctant to abandon the dear old thing
for good. It has become clear to me that something has been left
undone. Some critical yet unnecessary subject has been left unexplored,
some painfully obvious lessons have been learnt that remained
unexpressed, some members of a dwindling readership not yet offended.
So, I would request that you please indulge me while I engage in some
light housekeeping plateau-sweeping trashing the place because no way
in hell are we getting our damage deposit back, wrapping up.
Unfortunately, the subjects I have left unexplored are too numerous
to delineate in a practicable way, and I don’t know that I’ve learned
any lessons beyond those slight few that have been helpful in honing my ability to point and laugh at the
over-remunerated morons of our traditional media. So, I am afraid that
lessons may have to take a back seat to simply describing things that
annoy me. Rather, since my lessons were learned through annoyance, I’m
afraid I’ll just have to annoy you a bit as well, though it breaks my
heart. So, we'll start with a description of some of the salient features of blogging
that are annoyingly permanent, then move on to some things about
blogging that have changed, and how annoying that was, If we are fortunate,
the wisdom thereby gleaned will allow us all to mature and ripen, like a really
stinky cheese, and go on to annoy educate others.
* Well, to be specific, the other, earlier, more or less integritutional and indeed integroundational, blog.
*¹For the debunking of which we are indebted to Booman, of Booman's Tribune who demonstrated what could be called blogging integrity, not just by calling Johnson out on his spreading of a lie, but also by finding a way to negate its effect.
*² Launched shortly after one of the founding members posted what was damn near the silliest thing I have ever read regarding political blogging, it still doesn’t rise to the level of T"E"BP’s earlier hilariousness.
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