Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Puzzled and troubled
When I began blogging in 2004, part of my delight in exploring hundreds if not thousands of blogs was discovering unexpectedly smart, witty, and outside-the-box verbal acuity in many people all around the country as they wrote about many things, particularly the impending election. Now it is four years later and another election is in the offing. This primary season, it seems to me, the blogging has had a tone significantly different and lacking in essential insightfulness. Plus, there's a snippiness and nastiness that I didn't see very much in 2004 despite it being such a hotly emotional contest. There was more out-and-out anger then, but it was straightforward. Writers either liked or loathed Bush and either tolerated or dismissed Kerry.
There's no denying that this primary season is unusual. There are two Democratic candidates with similar viewpoints on many things but whose governing approaches would be quite different from each other because their fundamental goals are so different. And neither candidate is someone to whom one would obviously give allegiance.
But what is surprising me is that it is more and more evident that some bloggers have problems with Obama's race and/or Clinton's gender. Just barely under the surface is discomfort and unease with one or both candidates, although not particularly with either one's policies or philosophies since they hardly ever talk about them, but with them, personally, with their backgrounds or friends or outlook. No matter how hard the writers construct paragraphs full of clever words, what it comes down to is encasing their distaste for Obama and/or Hillary in rhetoric that sounds like patronizing adults talking about obstreperous children. It's weird. And it's disappointing.
There's no denying that this primary season is unusual. There are two Democratic candidates with similar viewpoints on many things but whose governing approaches would be quite different from each other because their fundamental goals are so different. And neither candidate is someone to whom one would obviously give allegiance.
But what is surprising me is that it is more and more evident that some bloggers have problems with Obama's race and/or Clinton's gender. Just barely under the surface is discomfort and unease with one or both candidates, although not particularly with either one's policies or philosophies since they hardly ever talk about them, but with them, personally, with their backgrounds or friends or outlook. No matter how hard the writers construct paragraphs full of clever words, what it comes down to is encasing their distaste for Obama and/or Hillary in rhetoric that sounds like patronizing adults talking about obstreperous children. It's weird. And it's disappointing.
Labels: 2008 election, blogs (others'), writing
Permalink | 
| posted by jau at 9:19 AM
jau — at 9:51 AM, March 26, 2008:
ligneus — at 10:31 PM, March 26, 2008:
| posted by jau at 9:19 AM
3 more:
jau — at 9:51 AM, March 26, 2008:
Yea but that implies that the bloggers are grownups themselves and although it'd be nice to think so, their comments do not suggest that is true. I really find the air of paternalism about both Obama and Clinton very unpleasant and disturbing. And, believe me, I'm not a p.c. person (except of the computer kind) at all.
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ligneus — at 10:31 PM, March 26, 2008:
I guess that depends which bloggers you're talking about. I agree about the paternalism but think creeping fascism might be a better term.
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