Step One: {Markos, Jerome, Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, or some such person} writes a diary on some aspect of political policy or political strategy.
Step Two: {somebody} uses said diary as "evidence" that progressive bloggers are up to {no good, conspiracy, quid pro quo, something fishy}.
Step Three: {Mickey Kaus, David Brooks, or some such person} links to said "evidence" and gives it a voice at {a major-ish internet media outlet}.
Step Four: {Some diarist somewhere} writes a {refutation, commentary, snark piece} about the attack.
Step Five: {Kos or whoever} links to said diarist and/or writes a {denial, rebuttal, dismissal} of said no-goodery.
Step Six: {A relative outsider} offers his or her take on the disagreement.
Step Seven: {A traditional media outlet} does a story on the phenomenon.
Step Eight: {A diarist} writes about the news story and analyses it.
Step Nine: The diary gets recommended and commented upon, linked to, spurs endless speculation and launches the whole pointless exercise into another masturbatory iteration.
Step Ten: Samuel Clemens has to ask, when did it get so "meta" around here?
I started reading political blogs like daily kos because I wanted to read about political issues and strategy. Now I'm seeing more and more blogging about bloggers, blogging about blogging, blogging about the blogging community and who comprises it, blogging about discussions about blogging, blogging about bloggers who attack bloggers, blogging about discussions about the blogging of blogging, and meta-meta-meta-meta bloggerly bloggity blogs about blogging blogs and the blogs who blog them.
The big-name, widely-read bloggers who engage in this sort of discussion are, for me, a turn-off. I don't want to read Kaus writing about Kos. I'm not into reading Kos on Kaus. I don't see the point of someone else writing about Kaus and Kos, or Kos and Kaus writing about other people who are writing about them, or about the other people who are writing about the people who write about them.
Listen: It's not really fair of me to criticize, so I won't. I don't put my thoughts out in public in front of many, many people several times a day for discussion and debate, so maybe I don't take this stuff so personally.
And I understand that there's a place for discussions about what the political blogosphere is, how it should function in the political universe, who comprises its membership, what constitutes its best attributes, and how can they best be put to use to accomplish progressive change.
And I understand that the blogosphere is a sounding board, an echoing interconnectivity, and that its capacity for linking, diarying, and commenting is one of the things that makes it unique and impressive.
And I understand that when people attack what you are doing, it's very hard not to respond.
I wonder, though. When TV emerged as a new media, were there TV shows about TV? Were there TV show hosts doing shows about TV show hosts, and other TV shows about those shows? Did radio stations make shows about the shows, causing the TV shows to make shows about these shows about shows?
I also wonder if people are really interested in this sort of thing. I wonder if Kaus's readers get bored with his obsessive commentary on other bloggers, and if Kos's readers are interested in his response. When I come to this website, I skim the headlines until I find something that interests me. When I see an article about "who hates the netroots today," I skip it.
I might take some shit for this, but I must say that I also skip articles about the nature of the progressive blogosphere (it's complicated), articles about media outlets being biased (duh), articles about pundits being idiots (major duh), articles about page views and unique visitors and ratings and ad revenue, articles about bloggers on book tours, articles about Yearly Kos...
(oh god, please don't kill me...I mean, I think it's really great that people here have found a community through blogging and exchanged ideas and got work done, but I'm just not that interested about how significant it was or what it meant to the ultimate fate of democracy)
...articles about which bloggers are working for which campaigns, articles about blog advertising, articles about the relationship between mainstream political organizations and blogs, articles about the relationship between media and blogs...I think you get the point.
Anyway, I didn't mean to just poop on the blogosphere like that, because I really enjoy 99% of it. I think I was just suffering a little bit of the po-po-mo blogger blues. It's getting a bit too self-conscious around here, a bit too self-reflexive. Am I alone here?