There isn’t one.
Okay, that’s not completely fair. Mostly fair, but not completely. There are a handful of web sites (a few of which are actualy readable) and a group of trolls who go to places like The Buzz and post ridiculous anonymous comments. That’s about it.
You may notice that you don’t hear much about conservative blogs or a Republican web presence in Florida. They not only don’t seem to have much acumen in this area, they don’t seem to care a whole lot.
That’s fine, let’s help them keep it that way. A few suggestions:
1. Don’t read the conservative blogs (except for the one or two sane ones). Most of them don’t do anything but repeat the same talking points that are on the national conservative blogs.
2. Don’t link to them. It helps drive their traffic and raise their profile. Don’t help them.
3. Don’t specifically talk abou them. Same reasons.
This may sound a little harsh, but it’s meant to. The fight between liberals and conservatives isn’t simply a game to see who can win, it’s a fight over policies that affect people’s lives. If their side wins, people’s lives are harmed. We shouldn’t enable that. And to the progressive Florida blogosphere’s credit, we aren’t helping them. Good.
So I guess there really isn’t much of a problem after all.
While there really isn’t much of a conservative blogosphere in Florida, the story chat message boards in Florida newspapers are teeming with the most prejudiced, right-wing a-holes imaginable. While we should surely consolidate our hold on the Florida blogosphere, we should also branch out to bring sanity to these very public, very visible message boards. Even a few comments a week can bring a reasonable, progressive voice to these places. Otherwise, the people reading the boards online will be presented a skewed view of public opinion.
I agree and one big reason is that few people approve of or want to read about the Republican death culture. I saw one conservative poster chortling over the death of Vilma Espin today. Much as I do not care for Republicans politicians, I would not rejoice in the death of one of their spouses…but if one is for the death penalty– as are most Republicans –it is only a beat away to rejoice at the death of individuals they don’t like.
Conservative bloggers show phony respect for life, but actual jubilation at death.
[see Babalu which I only see when it comes up at BlogNetNews once in a while]. Of course there isn’t much of a conservative blogosphere –not that many people embrace their culture of death.
I must say it is positions like this – we must win or people die – that most Americans have tuned out politics. Real discourse, a discussion about issues, no longer exists.
Instead, both sides have fallen back to hyperbole.
The value of the internet is not to have each side talking amongst themselves, further isolating themselves. When lefty bloggers fail to engage those on the right, and those on the right fail to engage the left, all we are left with a polarized, bifurcated blogosphere.
I urge you and your readers to enter into the conversations, point out how our side is wrong. Discuss and debate the issues.
If you truly believe you are right, and that conservatives are wrong, then there should be no reason why you would avoid taking us on in the blogosphere.
Keep on writing, and I will as well.
Hopefully, you consider mine one of the sane blogs.
Well, I read some Florida blogs that aren’t typically political in nature that sure do have a conservative bent. They have never voted Democrat and are damn proud of it.
And then there is one that I’m currently reading that offers once sentence submissions with a link embedded that is supposedly funny. I guess.
You have to read them. Remember to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Tim, I don’t think the issue is that progressive bloggers don’t engage with the right and center; we surely do in both print media (letters to the editor) and neutral media sites like the Buzz.
The point of the editorial is to illustrate that you conservatives are losing online, not just nationally, but in Florida as well. We don’t need to “engage” conservatives in the blogosphere when this may weaken our advantage. That doesn’t mean we as individually isolate ourselves in echo chambers.
“I must say it is positions like this – we must win or people die – that most Americans have tuned out politics. Real discourse, a discussion about issues, no longer exists.”
Certain aspects of politics have always been rude and crude in this county. Read about Thomas Jefferson’s Presidential campaign and the insults and attacks thrown at him.
And by the way, as a young person my life *has* been harmed by the other side, though certainly others have been harmed much more during this President’s Administration. The student loan increases passed by the previous Republican Congress to save all of 22 billion over 5 years (that amount of money is spent within three months in Iraq) raised my student loan repayment interest rates to 6.8%. The current Congress has taken steps to reduce that number. This and many other issues make it clear to me which side I should be on.
Let’s face it. They have the MSM repeating their political framing and they virtually own talk radio. Yes, we need to hold our advantage in the blogosphere, but we also need to have our voices heard in more traditional outlets.
>While there really isn’t much of a conservative blogosphere in Florida, the story chat message boards in Florida newspapers are teeming with the most prejudiced, right-wing a-holes imaginable. While we should surely consolidate our hold on the Florida blogosphere, we should also branch out to bring sanity to these very public, very visible message boards.
You are right. One of our managers, Joseph Lyles, is working on this as we speak and is not only coming up with a list of message boards, but strategies for successfully engaging them.
>I must say it is positions like this – we must win or people die – that most Americans have tuned out politics. Real discourse, a discussion about issues, no longer exists.
Several problems with this –
1. That’s not what I said. I didn’t say that people die, just that their lives are harmed. When you start pointless wars, people do die, though, and when you pass pointless tax cuts, people lose essential services.
2. I don’t think most Americans have tuned out politics. Voter turnout and participation rates reject that.
3. You can’t have real discussion with the George W. Bush/Ann Coulter style conservatives (just like you can’t have real discussion with the ANSWER-style liberals). The difference is, the Bush-style conservatives rule the Republican Party, while the ANSWER liberals are marginalized even amongst liberals. We can discuss issues with Crist-style Republicans, they are just few and far between and even fewer of them are blogging.
>The value of the internet is not to have each side talking amongst themselves, further isolating themselves. When lefty bloggers fail to engage those on the right, and those on the right fail to engage the left, all we are left with a polarized, bifurcated blogosphere.
I have no problem engaging those on the right — I comment pretty regularly at The Buzz — I just don’t have much interest in commenting and extremist conservative blogs.
>I urge you and your readers to enter into the conversations, point out how our side is wrong. Discuss and debate the issues.
We do.
>If you truly believe you are right, and that conservatives are wrong, then there should be no reason why you would avoid taking us on in the blogosphere.
If the rest of the conservative blogosphere engaged in this in a good-faith way, I would agree with you. They don’t, however, so it isn’t constructive and engaging nutjobs in debate not only encourages them, it validates them.
>Hopefully, you consider mine one of the sane blogs.
Yes, I do.
>You have to read them. Remember to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Our enemies, though, aren’t conservative bloggers, they are conservative politicians.
>Yes, we need to hold our advantage in the blogosphere, but we also need to have our voices heard in more traditional outlets.
I think that is definitely one of the goals. And we’re having some traction on that, that’s why the media doesn’t like us. More and more people are using the Internet to replace the traditional outlets, though, so I think we can work around them when they won’t work with us.
You wrote- “Okay, that’s not completely fair. Mostly fair, but not completely. There are a handful of web sites (a few of which are actualy readable) and a group of trolls who go to places like The Buzz and post ridiculous anonymous comments. That’s about it.
You may notice that you don’t hear much about conservative blogs or a Republican web presence in Florida. They not only don’t seem to have much acumen in this area, they don’t seem to care a whole lot.”
Obviously you haven’t done much checking around. Florida conservative blogs include-
Peer Review FL
Right Wing Howler
A Cool Change
Florida Cracker
Bright & Early
Assorted Babble
Babalu Blog
to name a few and probably the best written conservative blog of them all
State of Sunshine.
My blog is The Florida Masochist. Maybe you’ve mistaken Palm Beach County for all of Florida. To my knowledge, I’m the right of center blogger talking Florida issues in this county.
Then I’m an independent conservative. A Registered Democrat, who has decidedly different views on Immigration, Minimum wage, GLBT issues, in addition to being critical of the war in Iraq, from other right of center Florida bloggers.
I think if you really looked around, you’d find the conservative blogosphere in Florida is a pretty diverse crowd. We don’t all agree on anything.
Making sweeping statements or generalizations without study, is not a debate. If you want to discuss some florida issues, or just see who is today’s Knucklehead winner(I’ve given the award in equal amounts to Democratic and Republican Florida Congressman), drop by my blog.
Bill
aka The Florida Masochist
>Obviously you haven’t done much checking around.
Sure, I have, that list strikes me as a handful, which is what I said.
>Maybe you’ve mistaken Palm Beach County for all of Florida.
I’m not sure why you would say this. I don’t live in and haven’t visited PBC any time recently.
>Then I’m an independent conservative.
Makes you quite rare, then, these days, doesn’t it.
>Making sweeping statements or generalizations without study, is not a debate.
Who said I was engaging in debate on this topic?
“And by the way, as a young person my life has been harmed by the other side, though certainly others have been harmed much more during this President’s Administration. The student loan increases passed by the previous Republican Congress to save all of 22 billion over 5 years (that amount of money is spent within three months in Iraq) raised my student loan repayment interest rates to 6.8%. The current Congress has taken steps to reduce that number. This and many other issues make it clear to me which side I should be on.”
>> On the other hand, my student loan rates dropped during the Bush administration. They were higher when Clinton was president. Individuals fare better or worse, but politicians can never provide a system where no one is ‘harmed.’ The decision is always how can we benefit the most people. You and I, obviously, would disagree on both the definition of ‘benefit’ and the manner in which benefits are derived. That is an example of a good (little-d) democratic debate.
“You can’t have real discussion with the George W. Bush/Ann Coulter style conservatives (just like you can’t have real discussion with the ANSWER-style liberals). The difference is, the Bush-style conservatives rule the Republican Party, while the ANSWER liberals are marginalized even amongst liberals. We can discuss issues with Crist-style Republicans, they are just few and far between and even fewer of them are blogging.”
>> I agree wholeheartedly. I’d like to change that. The larger problem is political discourse in general is becoming more and more and more extreme – focused not on what is right for our society, but solely on winning. “They are bad. We are good. Vote for us so we can protect you from them.”
“…when you pass pointless tax cuts, people lose essential services.”
>> And here, the definitions of ‘pointless’ and ‘essential’ are policy decisions. To me, the government at all levels offers far to many services that are not essential. There hasn’t really been much debate about this topic. Everyone somehow assumes if government is offering a service, it must be essential and therefore should not be cut. I disagree.
>> Too bad our politicians, on the right and the left, are too scared to have a frank discussion on this subject.
—
As for the “Buzzerati” – even I don’t like how the trolls there operate. People should have the courage to append their name to their work. Or at least develop an online persona and use that (a few do). The few times I even read the comments there, I find it more annoying than anything.
>The larger problem is political discourse in general is becoming more and more and more extreme – focused not on what is right for our society, but solely on winning. “They are bad. We are good. Vote for us so we can protect you from them.â€
1. As a historian, I don’t see that things are getting worse at all. Political rhetoric in America has always been like this. The Declaration of Independence is pure hyperbole and if Jefferson had his way, it would’ve been even more so. Political discourse is not nice and it never has been. It’s no worse now than in the past, in many cases, it’s better.
2. I agree with you that a lot of the focus is on winning, not what is right or wrong, but I see much, much more of that from the conservative side and a limited amount of it from the liberal side. This site, for instance, has said a number of good things about Crist — all based on policy and substance, not on nonsense you see elsewhere. I doubt I’m unique in that.
>To me, the government at all levels offers far to many services that are not essential. There hasn’t really been much debate about this topic. Everyone somehow assumes if government is offering a service, it must be essential and therefore should not be cut. I disagree.
I agree with you that there is little debate on this topic. And much of the debate focuses on attacking liberals for creating these services, despite the fact that Republicans control the government and have for most of the last decade. I don’t know of anyone who actually thinks that a government service, by definition, is essential. I do know, however, of people who claim that pretty much any government service is nonessential — a position that I wholeheartedly reject on both logical and on moral grounds.
>As for the “Buzzerati†– even I don’t like how the trolls there operate. People should have the courage to append their name to their work. Or at least develop an online persona and use that (a few do). The few times I even read the comments there, I find it more annoying than anything.
That’s why I consider you one of the sane ones.
The Center for American Progress and Free Press just released a report on the right-wing domination of talk radio and what can be done to correct it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/20/radio-report/