Me And My Big Mouth

Actually...I Let My Fingers Do The Talking


Back in 2004, when we moved from Atlanta to St. Simons, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, The Brunswick News. The week we moved in, the letter was published in the paper and one of my neighbors walked up, handed me a copy, and said something to the effect of "boy, you don't waste any time getting involved...do you?"

It was my first effort to communicate with the "powers what be" at any level other than bitching about my business license to Cobb County or yelling at customer service reps with the phone company or at Sears and Roebuck.

Since that day, I have become a regular contributor to the “letters to the editor” section, regularly write to my state representatives and US Congressmen, and engage in spirited E-mail debates with nationally published scientists and authors.

It’s amazing the response that an intelligently worded, non-insulting missive will elicit.

Captain Ed over at Captains Quarters has had just such a debate with the Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum over the response of Conservative bloggers regarding the Islamic Muslim “cartoongate” issue.

Anne takes issue that Right Wing bloggers seem to be defending the freedom of the press to publish these “offensive” cartoons, while we lampooned Newsweek magazine when they published the false “Koran flushed down the toilet” story last year.

Although I fail to see the equality of the comparison of publishing an unverified accusation of wartime misbehavior as “NEWS” with the publication of an “editorial CARTOON”, I still wholeheartedly support Miss Applebaum’s right to write an EDITORIAL—as long as she gets her facts correct.

Where Anne went wrong in her editorial was in misrepresenting the Conservative bloggers as a monolithic bloc that all think and say the same things, the same way.

Continuing my audacious trend of writing to important people in high places, I tendered the following correspondence to Miss Abblebaum this morning via E-Mail:



Dear Anne,

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to engage Captain Ed over at Captain’s Quarters in a rational, intelligent debate regarding the recent “Muslim Cartoon” upheaval. It is refreshing to have a professional journalist of your stature step out from behind the newsprint pages and speak directly to the issues that we address daily here on the internet.

Further, the fact that your work is clearly identified as an “op-ed” piece rather than a “hard news” story certainly entitles you to express your own viewpoint, regardless of whether or not Captain Ed and I entirely agree with what you have to say. The blogosphere frequently laments gross examples of newspapers and TV networks blurring this (the op-ed/news) distinction on a wholesale basis.

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I’m somewhat biased in that I am a long time fan, follower, and correspondent with Captain’s Quarters and I find him to be sincere and even handed in his coverage of worldwide issues. I, like Captain Ed, am a conservative blogger, although I operate on a MUCH smaller scale and have many, many fewer readers than Mr. Morrissey enjoys. Politically I admit that I’m more of a Libertarian than a Republican, but I find myself identifying with the Right more than the Left on most issues, most of the time.

An important point that I would like to make here (or possibly reiterate on the Captain’s behalf) is that the blogosphere is not a monolithic block of monkeys typing on keyboards in their pajamas every evening. Bloggers like Captain Ed and the lawyers over at Powerline operate with fairly obvious ideologies, but without pre-approved agendas.

The logical development of their arguments and footnoting of their work via the inclusion of “links” to the source material makes their product extremely consumable to non-professional journalists like myself that have the luxury of being able to spend six or eight hours each day reading news and researching our work for inclusion on our own blogs.

If you will spend the time reading, I think that within the “Right Wing” side of the Blogosphere you will often find dissent and variation of opinion—although sometimes subtle—with Michelle Malkin, and John Hinderaker, and “Little Green Footballs,” and my little blog, What I’d Liked To have Said, often having common themes, but also pursuing the issue(s) at different levels with very different points of view.

Being an engineer by education, I tend to address issues like gasoline prices and “Global Warming,” not from an entirely political standpoint, but rather from a technical standpoint. You’d be surprised the number of ‘experts” that a little blogger like myself can get an e-mail interview with in the development of a story. As you probably know, the internet facilitates almost instantaneous “expert” status to someone like me that wants to take the time to spend a few days doing “Google searches” and that actually has the knowledge and education to understand the information that can be found online.

Yes, I also editorialize in my writing.

Yes, I get lazy sometimes and just parrot what Captain Ed or “The Hindrocket” says in my own words, BUT…believe me when I say that we (bloggers) are all watching each other and we will not tolerate intellectually dishonest or patently fraudulent words to stand unchallenged. We will eat our own and smile with faces stained with blood and feathers when and if the time comes.

Blogging, in its purest form, is suffering from its own popularity and the entry of “mainstream” elements into the blogosphere. I guess that it is a case of “if you can’t beat them—join them” or something.

Co-operative blogs like Huffington’s Post and Glenn Reynolds’s new right-wing “Pajama’s Media” conglomerate have been widely lampooned as all of us “have-not” bloggers watch some of the old line “big dog” bloggers try to parlay their success into a decent paycheck. It would appear to me and many of my peers that both efforts are spectacular failures to date, and that they have sold their souls to the devil in the process of becoming more mainstream and organized.

I think that blogging and earning substantial financial remuneration are ALMOST always incompatible. Money is worse than any editor, in that it changes your ability to say what you really want to say. When you are charged with writing editorial content like you are in your position at the Washington Post, I want you to feel free to say whatever is on your mind and let the chips fall where they may—just be sure to say that your writing is an editorial, not a news story.

You always do.

In closing, I encourage you to continue your excellent efforts and again engage us here in “the new media” when the time comes. I wish that you wouldn’t limit your opinion based on following the “big bloggers,” however.

Try clicking on some of the “links” on the sidebars of “Powerline” and “Captain’s Quarters” and go see what the architects and engineers with a few thousand readers each month are saying. You might be surprised at the quality and content of the writing that is going virtually unnoticed.

Remember the old question…”if a tree falls alone in the forest, does it make a sound?”

Best Regards,

Virgil Raymond Rogers, III
St. Simons Island, Georgia