by Tan Copsey
Last night BBC4 in the UK featured ‘Blog Wars’ – an interesting, amusing look at the US blogosphere, with a focus on last year’s Liebermann – Lamont Connecticut Senate Primary. This has led me to blogging a documentary about blogs. At this very moment I may be trapped in a bizarre post-modern hall of mirrors from which I will never return – perhaps someone should make a film about it?
From the documentary a number of things hit home. First it is amazing how unprepared the Liebermann campaign were – they’re entire campaigning apparatus was seemingly incapable of absorbing the lessons of 2002 and 2004. But in light of Liebermann’s very successful pre-primary hosting smear, and his ultimate success in the general election, it seems the electorate at large had not adapted as much as the tech-politics evangelists would have you believe. Though an alternative view would be that ultimately Lamont’s failure was more down to his deficiencies as a candidate, and that pitching this battle as the final showdown between blogs and old style boosterism is obviously wrong.
Looking back at the mid-terms it is apparent that the blogs, particularly those of the triumphant netroots, had a massive effect. But it is also obvious that this happened in combination with the traditional party apparatus, and in combination with the kind of perfect storm of political circumstance that comes around every so often when one party has been in power too long (note: its coming here in the UK).
I would seek to avoid the technological determinism of some media ‘commentators’, including Christopher Hitchens who featured in the documentary, who conclude that blogging inevitably tends towards shrill-toned extremism. As Andrew Sullivan noted when faced with some of these outbursts - the blogosphere is not its own world, and it doesn’t create reality. The politics involved here were those of a campaign, they were raw and they were partisan, but surely this is as much a reflection of American politics as of blogs themselves.
So: ‘Hug a blogger’? – well maybe, but geeks on keyboards aren’t pretty. So instead it’s worth celebrating a little bit of political re-engagement. Also I’m not averse to hugs…
