Friday, February 20, 2009

A tale of two blogs

So a couple of blogs used a bit of what I said in Dowd versus Goliath, in very different ways. Actually, neither mentioned the name of my blog, but one linked to me and the other didn’t.

So, first of all, “a local blog that fancies itself a source of thoughtful political punditry”. Um, I have never said that I think my blog is a source of thoughtful political punditry. Because saying it doesn’t make it so. If my readers don’t think I am interesting, they won’t read my blog (clearly). To me, this is a way for me to write letters to the editor anytime I want, and I am not pretending that it is anything else. I certainly don’t go around talking about how people are urging me to write this blog.

So I asked a throwaway question, how did we get on what seems, to me, to be a weird schedule for electing Mayors. And Chad Hermann was caused to laugh out loud, that Ed Heath would be so stupid as to have forgotten the death of Bob O’Connor. Except that we already had a special election, with Mark DeSantis and his team defeated by Luke Ravenstahl, and Mayor Ravenstahl won the right to serve out O’Connor’s term. The timing of the next Mayoral election has nothing to do with the death of Mayor O’Connor. Period.

The other blog that mentioned me was Chris Potter’s Slag Heap (at the City Paper). He had a link to my post and a paragraph he thought apropos to a point he was making. No slam about whether I fancy myself a pundit, just a point to make. The paragraph he quoted supported his thought, but it was also one of my favorites from that post. So I am very happy for it to stand or fall on its own, as a representative of my thinking.

4 comments:

Bram Reichbaum said...

It was strange how it was important enough for Chad to quote you, but not cite you. I can see choosing not linking to your blog (under the general rule of, "I'm not even going to dignify this nonsense by increasing its traffic"), but to merely allude to you as a random, unnamed (and therefore no doubt typically disheartening) local blog was pretty skunkeriffic. In my opinion.

He doesn't make it easy.

EdHeath said...

Well, thanks for that.

In the rules for commenting on PG blogs, it states comments must not include "personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity or ethnic or racial slurs;" as well as "material that is defamatory, libelous or infringes on a copyright or trademark". I suppose by not linking to me Chad has danced around the rules. But he certainly quoted me directly, so I guess he wanted me to know how stupid he thinks I am.

Did I miss something? If Ravenstahl is serving the rest of O'Connor's term, then O'Connor's death has nothing to do with the timing of the upcoming election, right?

Bram Reichbaum said...

You are correct in that assessment, I'm pretty sure.

It could be considered "unusual" that Ravenstahl just recently withstood a Special Election challenge on the heels of this Primary Election. But then again that's really not all that uncommon.

EdHeath said...

Well, as I commented over at Chad's blog, the reason I was calling our schedule for electing Mayors weird is because it is not in a midterm year or a presidential election year. I expect the average voter, having endured the recently past election season, is not going to be enthused about more of their TV programs interupted with debates and more political commmercials on (even if the only ones seen will be Ravenstahl commercials).