People often (sometimes) ask me how I come up with topics to blog about everyday.
So far I've found the key to maintaining a blog is the conceit to believe you have the greatest blog in the entire universe. If you honestly believe that, you will feel obligated to post as often as you can. If you don't you will get distracted by things such as watching television and eating cherries, and your blog will fall by the wayside.
The only problem with this method is you will inevitably run into other writing that calls into question the inherent dominance you've been able to convince yourself of. It doesn't have to be from another blog. For me, it usually comes in the form of a well-written traditional newspaper article. When this happens I don't panic, because there is an easy remedy.
The Huffington Post.
In some respects The Huffington Post is very good. It provides useful, well-chosen headlines and links (albeit from a fanatical liberal perspective*) and has recently added an interesting media coverage section.
But the site's bread and butter is its group blog, which features a constant barrage of posts from journalists, "writers," professors, actors, activists, executives, politicians, gurus, "comedians" teenagers, sibling's of celebrities and Arianna Huffington's domestic staff. What unites this diverse collection is their inability to write clearly, logically or comedically .
That might be a bit unfair. A good percentage of the posts are anti-Bush screeds, and after six years those inclined to dislike the president and his policies have developed a fairly logical case against him. The problem arises when posters try to deviate from the established formula.
This post caught my eye today. Not because I was looking for validation of my writing skills, but because I found the author's premise -- that our founding fathers' big mistake was they didn't allow for a "king" of The United States interesting.
While I didn't really expect the traditional Royalist argument, and did surmise the whole thing had something to do with the author disliking the current president, I was still unprepared for the utter awkwardness with which the author defends his provocative tease; basically he argues a symbolic leader could stand above the political fray, and other countries do it so why shouldn't we?
Yet, the author makes no attempt to provide evidence that having a symbolic leader has served these other countries in the manner he suggests it could serve the United States, or at all. Furthermore, he has nothing clever/funny or below the surface insightful to say.
The tragedy (with a very small t) of this, is that if the author played the whole thing for laughs I could see some pretty funny directions he could go. He also has a solid point about people rallying around the president and the actual flag, simply because they think it's the patriotic thing to do.
Unfortunately the author's lack of thought organization and relevent written communication skill dull out any potential for comedy, or point he might have. Like most of the posts of Huffington, he would have been better off just typing his tags and adding a "discuss." "
In that respect the blog on Huffington Post is a microcosm for the blogesphere as a whole.
But a neatly organized one-stop microcosm that is sure to boost the esteem of any half-way decent writer/blogger.
A trick, I suspect, would also work for a sixth grader preparing a book report.
*It is worth noting the way-over-the-top liberal Huffington post is to the more established and moderately conservative Drudge Report, as the way-over-the-top conservative Fox News Network was to the moderately liberal and then more established CNN. Does that mean Huffington will soon surpass Drudge as the place more people go for their morning headlines? That remains to be seen. Although I would never bet against Matt Drudge's fascinating, one part pitch perfect, one part highly fetishized news sense.
Today, on the always entertaining Huffington Post Blog, hot-tempered Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin unleashed this doozy on an unsuspecting, undeserving public:
