Golden Anniversary

I have passed a historic milestone. Yes, I have achieved 50 blog posts. My circulation is skyrocketing . . . soon to approach double digits.

Thus, it seems like a good time to recycle one of my earliest posts to keep all this wild success from going to my head. ;-)

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Why I should not be blogging

Reason #1: I’ll say dumb things more often.

Our world is moving ever faster towards a universal knee-jerk thought process. We are a society that finds quietness disturbing and eschews contemplation. As Wendell Berry, who won’t even use a computer, has written:

A computer, I am told, offers a kind of help that you can’t get from other
humans; a computer will help you write faster, easier, and more. For a while, it
seemed to me that every university professor I met told me this. Do I, then,
want to write faster, easier, and more? No. My standards are not speed, ease,
and quantity. I have already left behind too much evidence that, writing with a
pencil, I have written too fast, too easily, and too much. I would like to be a
better writer, and for that I need help from other humans, not a machine.—

Wendell Berry, “Feminism, The Body, and the Machine.”

It took me 15 minutes to find that quote online, using my computer. I knew it was out there. I knew the gist of it. I have now cut and pasted it into this file that I will post to my blog, but I haven’t even read it completely once. I pulled it from someone else’s website and haven’t checked the original source. The irony is thick but somehow I seem to think that knowing the irony insulates me from the impact of the underlying critique.The values of a blog are indeed “speed, ease, and quantity” and I have already proven that I can abuse this power enough with thoughtless emails. Why now do I wish to add to my misfortune with words to which ¼ of the Earth’s population will have access?

For example, I have typed these words while watching Stephen Colbert and Mike Huckabee play air hockey with a Texas shaped puck; followed by a writer from the West Wing telling of how he was befriended by Bill Clinton and eventually shown the door by Hillary. It is now 1:00 in the morning. These are not factors that usually lead to profound thinking. Mr. Berry’s pencil in the sunshine is no doubt a better tool and venue for writing something closer to truth.

So, in light of the heightened risk of foot-in-mouth disease, I will at least promise to review my blog postings, take a deep breath and step away from the keyboard before I post anything. Hopefully that will help (my third word in this post was originally a typo) but you have been warned, and I have been warned but have not heeded the warning.

Reason #2: No one will read this.

Many of my concerns raised in Reason #1 are alleviated because in all likelihood no one will ever read this. Still, that fact raises the question: Why bother?

There is a memorable seen in the classic political documentary The War Room that comes to mind. James Carville and George Stephanopoulus are watching Ross Perot and his wife dance to Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” as the Texarkana native's campaign draws to a close. Carville comments that they have just witnessed the most expensive act of political [self-pleasuring] in the history of the world.

For those of us without Ross Perot’s billions, blogging offers a less expensive venue for getting things off our chest and contributing to the public discourse. Of course, Ross Perot’s campaign likely had a history changing effect by helping to elect Bill Clinton, but that is another matter. It seems far less likely that my blog will have even an indirect effect on any election. Despite those two very good reasons for not blogging---let’s face it, it is just kind of cool to smugly say, “Well, actually, I addressed that issue on my blog. I’m sure Newsweek will be calling follow up anytime now.” If I ever start to believe that, I promise I’ll stop blogging though.

And now, all excuses aside, let the games begin . . .