Okay, so I'm grumpy. I woke up an hour and a half earlier than I wanted to, and found myself uncharacteristically seething over this blog I occasionally read and comment on - "The Daily Kos."
I am tired of the manipulation and the outright lying. The pimping of diaries in the titles, thus hooking you into reading them - only to find out that the stunning claim was hyperbole or - worse yet! - a complete and total fabrication. Oh, and please don't get me started on the diaries promising analysis but offering fluff or froth instead.
I am, quite unlike Keith Olbermann last night, in tears.
I arrived home from Vancouver late last night, prepared to scan Daily Kos for any news coming out of the meeting between President Bush and Senator Obama. But before I could find a diary along these lines, I was struck by one on top of the recommended list - "Keith Olbermann is in tears." "Oh. My. Fucking. God." I thought, "Keith Olbermann broke down sobbing on national television! Whatever could have happened?"
Trembling hands, I clicked on the diary and began to watch the clip of Keith's televised meltdown. Instead, I found myself treated to the unusual spectacle of staring into Olbermann's eyes to see any hint of his rims brimming with watery saline. There was none. Keith did his usual emotional, dramatic presentation which has a great way of punctuating his emotional appeals. Do I find Keith Olbermann preachy? Yes. But since I usually agree with his sermons (and since I'm actually a preacher by profession myself), I don't have a problem with that.
But the point is that the diarist lied. And I felt manipulated into reading his or her diary. I'm glad that I saw the video - don't get me wrong - but I was left with the sense that the title had been a device to get the diary read and, if possible, recommended. Was it really necessary?
Following this aperitif, a frankly emotional and not terribly analytical appeal to Prop Hate supporters, I decided to check out another recommended diary on the same topic: "Keith Olbermann: You have changed my mind forever." I thought that perhaps we would have an expansion of the discussion - but, you know, how can you really expand on an emotional appeal, except by making another emotional appeal? And so I found myself reading that peculiar genre of Daily Kos diary: The conversion story.
The diarist, about whom I admit to knowing nothing, has had a road to Damascus experience. Keith Olbermann has made him or her see the error of his or her ways. That may be very true. But again, for better or for worse, I found myself feeling manipulated. After all, how do I know if the claim that Olbermann's nontearful theatrics had convinced a Prop 8-supporting evangelical, who just happens to post on Daily Kos, to suddenly excoriate Californians for "raising millions of useless dollars into a hate campaign"? I was left feeling that, the diarist's claims about him or herself notwithstanding, it strained my credulity to think that their mind had not already been changed prior to Keith's appeal.
I suppose I could have been sanguine about it all, until I actually found what I was looking for - a diary about the meeting between Bush and Obama. To my disappointment, there was not much to say. A lot of photographs of the present and future first couples hanging out, walking around, and generally schmoozing with each other. But all that came out of the meeting were fluffy news releases about what a splendid time was had by all.
So what was left for readers to comment on? Well, how fine our guy looked, and what a toad the current president looked like. Bush was uncomfortable looking, apparently, dishevelled, tubby (perhaps with a protruding liver as a result of his continuing alcohol abuse). His suit was shabby, or didn't fit properly; and Laura Bush looked like June Cleaver, or a Stepford wife, or Betty Crocker or something. And, my, isn't Michelle Obama statuesque? And what a pretty red dress she's wearing! And doesn't Barack look athletic, or cool, or dude-like, or alpha male-ish (whatever that is)?
I want content, dammit! Not diaries like the one I read earlier that day - also recommended - in which an aboriginal American member of the community complained that his life and struggles were being invalidated by people complaining about his spelling and grammar. Now, people can produce as much fluff or froth as they want, obviously - and this diary is obviously eligible for membership in that dubious pantheon. Or, they can lie or manipulate or make unverifiable, emotional claims about being a one-legged vet whose Iraq experiences has led them to see the light about the surge. But why is such emotional gibber getting recommended, while a lot of good, content-filled diaries lay unread and unpromoted to languish on the "recent diaries" list? Are we really, as a community, as vapid, vacuous, and vulnerable to hype and tear-jerking as all that?
Well...yes. And I decided to write a diary about it all. Because I'm nothing if not ironic.