Is this what we bloggers look like?



That cover art illustrates a piece at Las Vegas City Life about “war bloggers.” It's the typical print piece about bloggers, explaining first what a blog is and then portraying bloggers as one part Thomas Payne and one part talk-show-call-in-nutcase, if you know what I mean:

Admittedly, war blogging is a subset of a subculture.

First there are blogs, or online Web logs, which started as essentially journals by regular individuals from all walks of life. Blogs are pared down, less formal versions of personal Websites with the added feature that many allow readers to post their comments.

Blogs are electronic journals that combine the qualities of a newspaper editorial page with a more instantaneous venue than 24-hour cable news (both because it eschews the corporate structure and isn't dictated by a predetermined time schedule). After 9/11, conservative blogs erupted, covering the "blogosphere" like wild flowers.

The piece profiles two local bloggers in specific, a writer named James Hudnall and one member of the Conservative Brotherhood, Damon Thornton. In fact, the best thing about the piece is that it turned me on to those blogs, which I checked out and enjoyed and added to my blogroll. I have to admit, the piece was a bit kinder to bloggers than I expected it to be, given that the cover art and the illustration inside were rather alarming:



I’m still new to blogging, having only been at it myself for about three months. Like Hudnall and Thornton, I’d resist being labeled a “war blogger,” although I support the war effort. I’m comfortable calling myself “conservative,” obviously… and my beliefs do lean toward libertarian. But the term “war blogger” conjures up images that fit the illustration above. Besides, pigeon holes are for pigeons.

Check out Hud’s blog and and the Conservative Brotherhood, a collective of right-thinking African American bloggers that includes Damon Thornton. I’m glad I learned about them, and for that, the LVCL article was worth reading.