The answer is “I don’t care how big your penis is or how many people link to your blog!”
Hold on to your hats and glasses, folks! We’re in for a bumpy ride.
Instead of wondering why green house gases have screwed up the Southern California ecosystem, Kevin Drum wonders why there aren’t more women political bloggers in the top 100 of the EGOsystem. If you’re not familiar with it, the TLLB ranks blogs by both the number of blogs linking to it and site traffic. A couple of the nouns, verbs and adjectives have changed, but it’s essentially the same post we see in the blogosphere every 2-3 months. Kevin says:
There aren’t any institutional barriers in the traditional sense of the word [to blogging], which means either (a) there are fewer female political bloggers and thus fewer in the top 30, or (b) there are plenty of women who blog about politics but they don’t get a lot of traffic or links.
I’ve discussed this topic numerous times at my blog and under pen-names at other blogs. Now it’s your turn. What do you think?
February 20th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
I’m not silly enough to speak for all women, but for me, the reason I don’t do more political blogging is because there are no real discussions. It is the same with the op ed page.
Almost no one is attempting to understand something, examine the issue, change assumptions on either side of an issue, and come to some sort of rational understanding of the issue and the problems surrounding it.
Instead it is all about stating your position and then demonstrating why the other guy/gal is wrong. The louder and more vicious side wins, and that generally has nothing whatever to do with the actual merits of their position..
February 20th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
I’m trying to fix the problem by entering the blogosphere myself. Please visit.
February 20th, 2005 at 2:06 pm
I’m sure that everyone who reads my blog also reads Atrios, Kos, and The American Street, among others, so I don’t see much point in reiterating what they’re saying. Despite the many political blogs in my “links” list, my blog couldn’t be called a political blog, since only maybe 25% of the posts are on politics. If you want to see pictures of my dog, though, .
February 20th, 2005 at 2:06 pm
Damn, the source post material from Mr. Drum is tireder than a pre-nap Rip Van Winkle.
February 20th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Drum is making the assumption that the ecosystem is a fair and unbiased snapshot of blog popularity. It most certainly isn’t. It’s very easily gamed and rewards lockstep linkage — and thereby boosts sites in the great right-wing echo chamber, and downplays diversity.
He might want to think about why the few women he noticed in the top ranks tended to be right-wingers, on a system administered by a right-winger.