The Entire History of Everything Imaginable...

...In A Smallish Corner Of FarLeft Blogistan

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AllTheDIY
ThatFitsVille

For those of you that have been mistakenly trying to bash the doors on I-Tunes down looking for it, you can now find the 2nd installment of the cross-Pacific conversations with my spiritual advisor here.

Of course, that 'advisor' would be none other than the 'Reverand Paperboy' who, in addition to contributing to the world famous Galloping 'Banned-in-Guantanamo' Beaver, also runs a kinghell blog of his own called The Woodshed from across the pond in, get this!, Tokyo.

This week on the Rev's Maple Syrup Revolution podcast we have a great time talking about how we each got interested in, and, frankly, got hooked-on, the Bloggodome.

And while we didn't quite manage to get everything in there, it's a far and wide-ranging discussion that begins with the swiftboating of John Kerry and ends with joys of Busking when you don't even have to.

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Go figure.

Anyway, along the way we talk about:

The early wurlitzering of the Instapundit despite the non-stop putridity of his posts, including when his flies-in-my-eyes gaze turns northward....

The depth and breadth, both of the posts and the comment threads, of the early Atrios and what they have since devolved in..... to....

The firey births of BlueGal and Driftglass that were preceded by the mutually observed kicking of the latter out of the nest by the king of the five-tooled, take no prisoners left-sided uber-bloggers, Steve Gilliard....They now have the best left-sided, regularly-scheduled podcast on the webz....

The origins of the all-mighty 'Gilliard Doctrine'....

And someone we missed, but really should have mentioned known only as "Jen", who we hope is doing well....Why?....Because, in my mind at least, Jen and Steve were like Left Blogistan's own version of Hepburn and Tracy.

The thrill of the early 'Rome Really Is Burning' (or was that London?) chronicles of the cultural and political zeitgeist by the then still be-blogspotted Christy Hardin-Smith and Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake....

The Rev's very own adventures at the 'Lake when he ran an early bookclub with the guy who has done more to nail down the machinations, and rank-hypocrisy, behind the extreme right in the United States than any other blogger, David Neiwert...

The stupidity, not to mention the futility, of Subscription Wailing Walls.....

The thrill of chasing down the earliest serial subvertors of those walls b/w the information empowerment that was kick-started by the early newsite aggregators....

The man with the best, most seemless transition from posts of true power to threads where the punches were never pulled and the intellectual dust-ups were legendary, Billmon....

The Canadian Billmon - Dave, at the afore-mentioned Galloping Beaver - especially when he was writing and commenting flat-out like a madman with a crystal ball that the Vegas bookies would kill for. And it has to be mentioned that one of the things that made both Dave and Billmon's writing so powerful (and why Dave's still is), is the fact that, in addition to being fine wordsmiths, they both have been around the world and actually know things....

A discussion (although I think the Rev thought I was a little off-base and/or cuckoo) about whether or not the wingnut welfare-assisted sites, including the Cons own 'Blogging Tories', actually helped foster the vibrancy, and increase the rigour, of the best of Left Blogistan.

The difference between sites that became larger entities with a stable of writers and the small shops run by true amateurs with the passion to risk burning out rather than fading away.

The various ways and means to go pro and actually make a living at the thing. We agreed that the most successful, both monetarily and in terms of influence engendered across the entire bloggodome, was Josh Marshall with his Talking Points Memo, although we also acknowledged the semi-success of the slightly slimey 'famous-friends-writing-for-free' strategy of Ariana Huffington. We also talked about the fine work of Sean Holman locally and how tough it is for somebody who is essentially a straight investigatory journo trying to make a go of things of things in the toobz using the old-fangled Izzy Stone newsletter model. In the end, we wondered if maybe The Tyee doesn't have the best balance/mix of the dead-tree and the new-fangled digital worlds. However, neither of is entirely sure how, exactly David Beers did/does it and whether he really did pseudo-Soros/Labour pockets of depth to get going...Regardless, in the end, we the readers, have to realize that there is one thing that WILL fix the problem, which is, that we have to, as Driftglass says, "Pay the Effing Writer"....And luckily, the Bloggodome makes that really, really, ridiculously easy....So, if you live in Lotusland - Do IT!

And finally, we decided that Busking purely for fun is, when you get right down to it, essentially the musical equivalent of being a true amateur Blogger....But we decided to talk about that another day.....

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Again, if you wanna have a listen, the rev's fine audio work is here.


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One thing you won't hear on this week's pod, but I know the Rev has down on the punchcards somewhere, is our discussion of who the real first, pre-Apple IIe blogger really was...


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