Bloggers getting respect…sorta

Posted on August 28th, 2008 by Steve and currently 3 commenting.

CNN.com published an article about how bloggers are being given unprecedented access to the political conventions.  Over 120 were officially invited to the Democratic National Convention, and over 200 have passes to the Republican National Convention.  In addition, bloggers have found makeshift homes outside of the convention, with local entrepreneurs opening their doors and welcoming the business.

This is all great news.  Everyday Joe has a voice.  Some Joe’s have better voices than others.  Sure.  But more people get to give their opinions before the national media and cable services have filtered down the soundbites.  Yay.  Seriously.

But it all went awry with the last quote from the article….

“(Mark) Brooks, a 51-year-old who describes himself as breaking the mold of what people might imagine as a typical blogger, making time to garden in the summer and spend time with his family. ‘I’m not blogging from my mother’s basement in my sweat pants eating Cheetos,’ he said.”

YOU WERE SO CLOSE!!  Why…WHY?!?!?  You just got CNN to write a whole long article about how respected bloggers are…and you drop the Cheetos-bomb?

Here’s a hint Mr. Atypical…when you’re a part of a movement, don’t stereotype other members of your movement!  This article is about the 1000+ bloggers who have unprecendented access to the most powerful political structures in the world…and with one single sentence, you brought your movement back down to the ground.

Maybe I’m overreacting.  Maybe the folks at Techcrunch really are blogging from their mom’s basements eating Cheetos.  Maybe Jake McKee is balancing his laptop on his knee while spending all day in the mall food-court.  Or perhaps these are the true identities of Scott and Billy.  I don’t know.

But I do know that blogging is changing the way we get information.  And there’s no need to disparage that.   The only purpose that serves is to make you look like your better than everyone else…which defeats the whole purpose of blogging.  Bloggers aren’t better than everyone else….THEY ARE EVERYONE ELSE!  That’s the point.  Yes they have more knowledge on certain topics, or have an intriguing writing style…but superiority should not be considered an attribute.  If we wanted to get information from someone who thought they were better than everyone else…well, let’s just say that cable TV has some options for us.   Got it?

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