Sunday, May 15, 2005

*bloggit* said the little green frog to Ted Turner

Arianna Huffington now has a blog. Or rather her and her nearest and dearest famous friends do. I remember her from when I watched Bill Maher's show fairly religiously when I was in university. I, like a friend of mine, was somewhat smitten with Mr. Maher. Note to guys: you don't need to be 'classically handsome' (whatever that might be) to be attractive. You do however, have to have a couple of brain cells to rub together and not be an ass, generally speaking. Fine line, I know. Maybe he's just my pathetic version of the bad boy. No, no rap sheet, tattoos and piercings, but an attitude mixed in with an actual opinion. But I digress...

HRH Miss Huff has been getting a lot of press for discovering the power of the blog when in fact millions have been figuring that out for a long, long time now, most even longer than I. There was a bit on CNN an hour or so ago about this...a group of people including HRH musing about how sad it is that bloggers seem to focus on media criticism and not on original news.

Now I agree about the media criticism. I like reading blogs in my spare time, everything from the newly famous Huff Post to Rosie's and then all just the regular folks out there, and a lot of them, including myself, waste a lot of electrons bitching about the news....and they are right, I mean Paula Abdul's sex life is not *really* news now is it? Of course, we do get what we want, so someone must be watching. Let's all shrug at our collective guilt here. But what got me kinda pissed about the CNN chatters is the idea that bloggers do not take on "original news". Huh? I think they do, and in a very big way. We all take on the media's definition of real news by reporting our personal news, a.k.a. the experience of our lives. And some of us do a damn good job of it, thank you very much (keep reading for some examples). This isn't a media criticism thing....I mean NBC, CTV, CNN, they report their news, what sells ad time and what people like you and me watch. But blogger original news is not some second class thing just because it's not broadcast on TV. I mean, there's just as much chance of crap on the net as there is on TV, and Dan Rather can prove it.

So here, I offer some blogs that I occassionally like to peruse. One is about a woman who is facing health issues with her husband. Another is written by a mom from New York. Yet another was created by a Priest in Norway.

Say a Prayer
Fighting Inertia
Lime

I do not vouch for their 'realness' or their 'newsworthiness' to you, but offer them as an occasional option to CNN. And I have nothing against Arianna Huffington, really. It's just she's so prissy looking and sounding that I think she may have a pink dog like Marlen Cowpland. Sorry, that may be nasty, but whatever. As I've said before, get your own damn blog.

And on a related note....I'm reading Sarah Vowell's "Assassination Vacation". I LOVE her writing. Very *original*.

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