Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to be invited to participate in a bloggers' conference call with Senator Jim Webb. To the best of my knowledge every single blogger on the call was a Democrat or Liberal or Lefty of some sort.
I did not think this was unusual because elected officials of both the Democratic and Republican parties routinely meet with bloggers from their own party without inviting bloggers from the other party. This is because bloggers are universally admitted to be partisans: we do not pretend to be "objective" the way our brothers and sisters of the mainstream media do. I do not think that is a bad thing--I prefer to read the work of writers who acknowledge their bias.
I noticed this morning that Jim Hoeft, a Republican blogger who I generally respect though I seldom agree with, had published a post complaining about the fact that no Republican bloggers were invited to participate on Webb's call. Unfortunately, Hoeft's protest comes a few days too late.
Earlier this week another Republican blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, hosted a "Roundtable Blogger Conversation" with Virginia's Attorney General Bob McDonnell. Every single one of the bloggers participating in SST's roundtable was Republican or conservative. I have searched Bearing Drift for any pleas for the inclusion of Democratic bloggers on McDonnell's calls with Republicans; so far without success.
Please do not misunderstand: I mean no criticism, implied or explicit, of SST or Bob McDonnell for not including Democrats on a call meant for McDonnell's own supporters. I support McDonnell's right to meet with his own supporters whenever and however he wishes.
If Jim Hoeft objects to politicians having conference calls with their supporters and honestly believes that the audiences for these calls should reflect some kind of "diversity," with "affirmative action" for bloggers of the opposing party, well that's his right. It's just that Hoeft's outrage would appear to be a lot more credible if it had come a few days earlier, in reaction to McDonnell's calls.
I think a more interesting question might be whether McDonnell's calls included any Bolling supporters.
1 comment:
If it makes you feel any better, I wasn't invited to that one until right before the event, so I didn't make it.
McDonnell has held a conference call in the past with bloggers -- I remember Ben was on the one I attended. I never knew of any other Virginia conference call...so you can search all you want, but there was nothing to write about.
I was pleased that Kaine invited me to particpate in the one he held, but I had committments and could not attend.
As far as I know, those were the only three.
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