Blog Or Propaganda?
May 29th, 2009 by MariaEvans
Lt. Governor Matt Denn has caused a stir in Delaware’s Blogosphere by starting a blog that he touts as, “the first official blog written by a member of Delaware’s state government.” And as far as I can tell, it is. It’s also, as I pointed out on Down With Absolutes, a blog that doesn’t give the reader the option to comment.
Well, of course my blatant heresy lead to a bunch of comments like this:
Do you really think he is going to open the comment section for all the trash?
And this:
Oh, the exact reason why FSP and Maria want to comment, is the reason why there are no comments allowed. It’ll degrade to pure partisan off topic sniping at a moment’s notice.
And this lovely post from the Delaware Way:
Meanwhile, a pair of local GOPer henchbloggers, Dave Burris and Maria Evans (who, like Mr. Copeland, are members of long-time fat-cat Delaware families) end up chasing their tails over on DWA, taking the unsupportable and silly position that because Copeland blogs and takes comments, that Matt Denn’s new First State Blog is diminished, impugning a cowardly motivation, because Denn is not entertaining comment threads there. WTF? ….as if!
Yes, “as if” a politician would open up their blog for comments. “WTF” was I thinking? Sheesh.
Certainly former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown didn’t have the same advocates of open discourse in California that we have here in Delaware, because while Mayor of Oakland, he had a blog that accepted comments. You can check it out here. But hey, Oakland, they have less than a half million people so who cares?
Well, what about Malaysia? The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Bin Tun Hj Abd Razak blogs, and his blog is open to comments. Not only is his blog open to comments, but he is encouraging his cabinet to do the same thing. With a population of about 27 million, about 27 times the population of Delaware, the Malaysian Prime Minister puts himself out there. So did the Prime Minister before Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Bin Tun Hj Abd Razak.
So does the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Karim Masimov. Not bad for a former Soviet territory, opening up that dreaded comment section when Kazakhstan no longer has the luxury of sending people with opinions off to Siberia.
Back here, in the USA, there are many current elected officials who blog. One example (of many) is Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia’s blog. And *gasp* check out this blog. Yeah, that’s right, the Republican House Policy Committee has a blog and it, too, accepts comments.
That’s a fraction of what I found in a 10 minute search of politicians who blog.
Now, the comments on these blogs probably all go into moderation before they appear on the site, you know, to filter out the “trash”, but hey, it’s better than nothing.
