Slightly less cool than the Showcase Showdown

Posted on October 26, 2003 @ 7:34 am

On a lark, I decided to submit this site to The Truth Laid Bear’s weekly New Blog Showcase. To provide some background for those not familiar with the Showcase, it exists primarily as a way to get newer weblogs a little exposure, with the “winner” each week being determined by the number of inbound links to his or her blog. While this site has virtually no chance of winning, it seemed like a fun idea at the time. So, if you happen to be visiting from the Showcase, welcome–and feel free to blogroll me!
With that bit of exposition out of the way, TTLB encourages entrants to link to entries from a few other entrants’ blogs as part of the cross-promotional fun. One of the entries that leapt out at me immediately from this week’s submissions was “I miss Lewis Grizzard” from Anastasia’s Southern Musings. As I commented over in her blog, I’d like to think that much of what I know about humorous writing (which may or may not be that much) I learned from reading Lewis Grizzard’s syndicated columns in my local newspaper as a child. Then again, I also claim that much of what I know about performing on-stage I learned from The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, so what do I know?

With an exception or two, however, most of the entries in the Showcase this week are political weblogs. Obviously, this isn’t going to win me too many votes in the contest, but political blogs have never appealed to me at all. Maybe it’s because political science is both what I study and what I do for a living and, as a result, when I’m playing around on the Web, I’m looking for diversion as opposed to futher immersion. Then again, maybe it’s my training as a political scientist that has given me a relatively dim view of political editorializing–something that we’re usually encouraged not to do in our own professional work. Or, it could just be that I’m too much of a moderate to identify with what tend to be the more extreme positions, either right or left, of most political blogs.

Bah! Political commentary–who needs it? Go buy a copy of Chili Dogs Always Bark at Night instead.

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