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Blogwars

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Perlmutter has written an eye-opening book about blogging. While focused on political blogging, many of the insights translate more generally, including the way talent is uncovered, how first-person reporting can occur, and how diligent experts can track down the truth better than the mainstream media. Overall, Perlmutter's a level-headed guide, very articulate and thoughtful. A worthwhile read!

Prior to reading the book, I was pretty ignorant to the world of Blogging. As one who does not read political Blogs, I was mainly confused about why people do Blog and why others read them. Those answers, and then some, were answered by this book.

Perlmutter starts out explaining what a Blog is, which is easy to understand to the non tech-savvy individual. However, the book does not insult one's intelligence at all. It moves along quickly with fascinating facts and humorous bits that make the book a joy to read.

The introspective book is an excellent jump-on point for the non-Blogger and Blogger alike. It's fun, informative and just plain enjoyable.

Perlmutter offers an entertaining and insightful review of the history of blogging (pre-internet to its current form), and peppers his analysis with information gleaned from interviews with the most important bloggers today.

This is a particularly well-written book: inviting enough for those new to the blogosphere, yet penetrating enough to satisfy those more well-versed with the phenomenon.

Great read.

I have written on the internet for years. This is a good and accurate look at the blog world. The book is not partizant and does not favor any political side. As a blogger I found the book so what. But I did see what I write as a hobby this book accuralty reflects what you can expect to get into when you share your opinions. It is a rough and tuble world out there.

It is a mean place the blog world and it takes a great deal of time.

Perllmuter also goes into the history cause and effect of different events and campaigns that involved blogs. He also ties blogs to past forms of comunication back to depictions of the Battle Keddish.

If you blog you will find this booring but it is a great world if you are not fimilliar with blogging. The book goes into how bloggers got both Dan Rather and Trent Lott when they steped out o f bounds. The blogs have power. It is no one individual but how stories take a life of their own. Not that all internet traffic is spontainious much of it is contrived by some proment opinion holders.

Still if it is a good book if you are interested in politics or comunication. I would say that Blog Wars is a good first start to look at define and explain the political blogging universe.

In 1934 Columbia University social scientist Theodore Abel persuaded the German government to carry out this project among the German people: Abel offered cash prizes for the essays that best expressed how and why the Nationalist Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) achieved such rapid growth and popularity. Abel published the 'winning essays' and a less-than methodologically perfect analysis in 1938, under the title, Why Hitler Came into Power. Apparently aware of his methodological limitations, Abel resisted making unwarranted generalizations, but did prise open a chink in the prevailing belief that

"the NSDAP was essentially a lower-middle-class movement supported by elements of the undereducated, economically marginal ...petty bourgeoisie desperately afraid of proletarianization during a period of acute economic distress and social dislocation".... to whom National Socialism was " "the psychological reaction of the lower middle class" to the political traumas of the postwar era and the loss of its economic position and social status."

Abel, and subsequent analysts of the essays he collected, realized that the appeal of NSDAP ranged across all classes of German society; something more than economic dislocation was taking place: German people, rich, poor, and in between felt their values were being undermined; they joined NSDAP as a way to reclaim their national identity.

Of the blogs Perlmutter discusses in Blog Wars., the most familiar is DailyKos, presumably a wide open forum for advocacy of all things that tend to support the Democratic party. But like Abel's research, a closer look reveals serious stresses and maybe even an "enemy within" DailyKos's open forum. Specifically, censorship has been wrested from the generous hands of Markos Moulitsas, founder of DailyKos, who reminds bloggers to whom he offers a free forum to express their thoughts that DailyKos is his private property, and if he "decides that entries must be written in iambic pentameter," posters either comply or find another forum. Moulitsas holds the reins very loosely; not so some self-appointed vigilantes on the DailyKos forum, who have anointed themselves the lords and ladies of correctness on DailyKos.

But what is more interesting than the evolution of a group of self-appointed censors who are NOT Moulitsas but who co-opt his ownership privileges, is that the greatest sin one can commit on a forum dedicated to upholding American, Constitutional, and Democratic principles, is to fail to pay proper obeisance to Israel. Posters on DailyKos who, in the opinion of these vigilantes pay too much attention to Iran or refer too frequently to books such as The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy or Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, for example, find themselves banned from the site. Kossacks who criticize neocons, zionism, or Israeli oppression of Palestinian Arabs can, and often do, find themselves in the middle of a hornet's nest of ardently pro-Israel "TUs" -- Trusted Users -- who use privileges given them by longevity on the forum to silence many voices that challenge the necessity of America's unconditional support for Israel, pinned to the wall with the all-purpose label, antisemite. For example, Kossacks who challenge the validity of polls that are submitted as evidence that "Americans overwhelmingly support Israel" are banned, as are forum members who question why it is essential that an American support Israel.

On the other hand, no endorsement of Israeli actions that might be harmful to American interests or contrary to American values is ever questioned. For example, a diarist who wrote,

"Having been barmitzvahed on top of Masada, being fluent reading Hebrew, having gone to Hebrew school for 10 years, having toured Israel,...I know a little bit about Judaism. ... From these roots ...comes a toughness, no nonsense streak that many may find illiberal....a streak that says that if you F**k with Jewish people for no reason and you are an anti-Semite, you are going to get F**ked back at least 5 times as hard. It's the mentality of Never break someone's finger but if they break one of yours, you break 5 of theirs. If a terrorist kills 1 civilian, you go kill 100 terrorists."

Those are not American values. One commenter challenged the diarist on that statement. The commenter was banned, but the diarist making the less-than-American statement received nearly 40 'tips.'

Christianity is also fair game on DailyKos, and the trollhunters who ensure Jewish and Israeli correctness on DKos are not only out to lunch when Christianity is denigrated, as it is routinely, they use openly anti-Christian statements as their final fillip when banning.

What does the existence of an Israeli-correctness posse on DailyKos have to do with Theodore Abel's collection of essays from Germans in 1933? Just this: when patriotic citizens of a nation who worked hard to develop their own identity and values find those values hijacked by groups who not only do not share them but try to destroy them, those citizens get mad, and they find a way to recalibrate their identity and values.

Abel's essays, and blogs, are ways to express and to discover the mood of the people. Censoring the voices who express a discontented mood makes as much sense as telling a cut finger to stop bleeding.