Blognitive Dissonance

I was reading  "Wag the Blog" one of the cover pieces on political blogging in this week's New Republic, by TNR Senior Editor Ryan Lizza. My eye's were tired as I skimmed the article, so where the text at one point said "cognitive dissonance", I read "blognitive dissonance" and subconsciously credited Lizza with a self-deprecating "good'un". It seems that quite a few people still don't know what to make of the blogosphere, and this fact causes no end of trouble, not only for politicians and old media types, but for the bloggers themselves.

Many have commented on the differences between conservative and left-wing blogdom. One of those differences is that though left-wingers have very few scalps on their belt, they tend to take themselves much more seriously than conservative bloggers, who have brought down many of the mighty. And the lefties want to be taken very seriously by politicians and the old media. They think they have already succeeded in storming the gates of their own party, and are quite offended when someone questions their place at the table. And perhaps they have succeeded, at least in rattling the Democrats. To prove their clout, DailyKos blogger Markos Moulitsas, the king of lefty bloggers, and hundreds of other like-minded "Kossacks" participated in the inaugural YearlyKos, a giant lefty blogger confab, in Las Vegas last week. In attendance were Democratic legislators, leaders, and Presidential hopefuls, as well as reporters from the old media.

Notable was the lack of protocol and pecking order. It was like Captain Kirk meeting the King of Uranus. Who bows? Who scrapes? Should a politician act blog-savvy or folksy and ready to learn? How should reporters spin the event? Can they roll their eyes at the whole affair? How many politicians' hands can a Kossack shake and maintain his "street cred"? Was Governor Warner's $50,000 coming out party for the bloggers a goodwill gesture or an obscene attempt at a buyout. And how many blogger reputations will be ruined just by a meeting in-the-flesh? Also notable was the absence of one Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton. The lady is looking smarter all the time.

Any liberal risks the wrath of the lefty bloggers when criticizing them. But Lizza himself was cautiously skeptical of the whole YearlyKos affair. Far from circumspect, because he had no need to be, was Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard as he reported in his inimitably snarky style on his Ride with the Kossacks:

"WHOA! DID YOU JUST FEEL THAT? Did you just feel the earth stop spinning on its axis, then reverse its rotation? Did you feel the moon enter into its Seventh House, and Jupiter align with Mars? Did you feel Jesus stomp off in a snit, as He was replaced at the right hand of God by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, aka Kos? As in the eponymous blog Daily Kos? As in the four-year-old progressive website that is galvanizing the netroots and igniting the People Powered Movement? As in the site that is reshaping the political landscape, uprooting the old order, and, in Kos's words, relegating those who'd stand in the movement's way "to the dustbin of history"? Oh--and which is also a place where people blog about themselves?"

By all accounts, the YearlyKos crowd came out of Vegas looking more and more like part of the ideologically driven MoveOn/Deaniac wing of the Democratic party.

TNR's other cover story was a somewhat baffling farrago by Christine Rosen, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and senior editor of The New Atlantis, A Journal of Technology and Society. The article takes on techno-utopian bloggers of the libertarian/conservative persuasion. Her main target is Glenn Reynolds, the blogger dynamo behind InstaPundit. The story is mainly a hit piece on the Heh-Meister, upbraiding Reynolds for everything from his supposed gee-whiz techno-uptopianism to the lack of substance in his blogs. While some of her criticisms of Reynolds' ideas and style are at least arguable, her article fundamentally misrepresents or misunderstands not only much of what Reynolds says, but also his style, and even his use of hyperlinks. Now that's just plan dumb. (Heh.)

[The New Republic articles mentioned above are only available online in "teaser" form. If you're interested in them, subscribe online or borrow a copy of the magazine from your library. The Weekly Standard admirably makes available online the contents of its current edition as well as much from older editions.]

Update: LGF reports on how the dissonance in the Kosmos has become a cacaphony. Jiffy Pop, anyone?

Update (2): The circle has been closed. The feedback is ringing, though not dissonantly, in my ears. Welcome InstaPundit readers!