On Blogging and Hairy Chasms.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is peeved. He is downright angry. Maybe the RCOB is just now being drawn back from his eyes. Why has your Maximum Leader's wa been disrupted? Why has he lost his famously even-temper?

This.

Now allow your Maximum Leader to explain...

Any of us who choose to blog do so for a number of reasons. Your Maximum Leader started this blog as a way of just typing out his comments and thoughts on anything that seemed to catch his attention. Eventually, he realized that he wanted to invite a few of his friends to join in the same medium. He liked talking to these friends about anything in particular; and figured that he would enjoy reading their thoughts just as much.

Additionally, there is a certain narcissism to blogging. There is a particular joy some people can get from writing something, posting it, and then knowing that someone somewhere will read it. Your Maximum Leader admits that he does get a certain degree of self-satisfaction when he looks over his site statistics and sees how the ebb and flow of readership goes.

For a time, early in his foray into blogging, your Maximum Leader wondered what he could do to make his site more popular, and to drive more people to it. Then he realized, at least for himself, blogging was an end to itself in many ways. His goal shouldn't be to try and corral more and more readers. It should be to write about things he wanted to write about, and respond to items that his friends have written. That choice has certainly affected who comes to and who links to this site. Since you get a variety of opinion here we may not fit well into any category of blogger. And that likely has reduced site traffic. Liberal bloggers might not want to give your Maximum Leader a forum to speak to a liberal audience; and conservative bloggers might not want to give the Minister of Propaganda the chance to woo a conservative audience.

In the end, this blog, like any blog, is a forum for the authors. If you like it you are welcome. If you dislike it deliverance is a mouse click away. Your Maximum Leader has very little patience those who say "Oh I love it when you write about X. But do you have to write about Y too? I don't like your writings about Y."

To visit and read a blog is to accept it for what it is. You don't have to agree with what you are reading. Often you are free, or encouraged, to disagree. But don't go being all mealy-mouthed and say, "If only you wouldn't write about Y. I'd like you a lot more then."

That is why this post upset your Maximum Leader so much.

Your Maximum Leader was not upset with Dennis Mangan, but with Dr. Vallicella. You see Mr. Mangan's delicate sensibilities appear to be unsettled when he reads some of the scatological writings of my good friend, Kevin. He states that Kevin's blog is "not a blog I want to read."

Fine. He looked over Kevin's site and decided that it was not for him. Great! But what really sticks in your Maximum Leader's craw was Dr. Vallicella's response. Your Maximum Leader will summarize it thus: "Yeah, Kevin is a really bright guy who can comment intelligently on philosophical matters. But, all this potty humour is better relegated to somewhere where I wouldn't have to sift through it to get the good stuff. And by the way, I only linked to him because he linked to me."

What a sad response.

It is as if Dr. Vallicella was embarrassed for providing the link on his site. Dr. Vallicella was apologizing for upsetting Mr. Mangan's sensibilities by providing a link to Kevin's site. And at the same time he was trying not to offend Kevin, who is after all just being authentically Kevin.

Kevin's site is Kevin's site. You take it for what it is, or you don't visit. One thing that is so appealing about it is the very fact that it is both highbrow and scatological. Your Maximum Leader cannot think of another site quite like it. And that is its charm. You read it (or choose not to read it) for what it is.

I (your Maximum Leader) have known Kevin for nearly 30 years. And I can say that I have in the past said that we needed to figure out a way to harness Kevin's powers for good. I admit that I feel a little guilty now about those words. It is my hope that Kevin can harness some of his creative ability into a medium that a wider audience might enjoy. (Scatological humour isn't for everyone I grant you.) But I certainly don't want him to cease writing the potty humour either. It gives Kevin pleasure to write it. And I take pleasure from reading it.

This leads me to the one particular portion of Dr. Vallicella's response most annoys me. The whole "The Big Ho is obviously intelligent and I would encourage him to put his talents to better use" part. Just how exactly can he put his talents to better use? His frequent intellectual and philosophical posts aren't a good use? Or is good use exclusively contemplating the most esoteric aspects of human understanding to the exclusion of humour in any form? The mindset that Dr. Vallicella appears to be displaying is one of the most stifling. The mindset is "if you joke around and try to make people laugh you can't be a serious scholar." Why is it that academics and intellectuals have to be humourless? Is there really so much self-doubt in academe that you have to guard your reputations so closely against even a hint of self-deprecation or levity that you seek to stifle others?

(In my own field (History) this mindset manifests itself as intellectual elitism. I have met a number of "serious historians" who absolutely despise "historians" like David McCullough, David Halberstam, or Stephen Ambrose. Why? Because they are popular and accessible to the masses. And heaven forefend a serious historian be accessible...)

The suggestion that Kevin run two blogs I find somewhat insulting. Some people may choose to manage multiple blogs. They may choose to keep each blog to a particular theme so as to organize their own thoughts. Or they might choose to give you a single blog with all their thoughts present in a single place. That is their choice. Your choice as a reader is to frequent the sites you want without regard to the desires of others. If you don't want to read Kevin's humour posts - don't. But don't complain that you have to slog through the shit to find the serious stuff that you are really interested in. What Dr. Vallicella is really saying is that he wants Kevin to conform more to his idea of scholarship; or if he can't do that at least hide the unseemly parts from view.

Is this what Dr. Vallicella is talking about when he discusses reaping the whirlwind? Now that the boomer generation has successfully destroyed the "bourgeois patriarchy" that came before them, they are filled with regret that hitherto fore unacceptable topics of discussion in polite society are routinely flaunted publicly? Perhaps some boomers should have given a little more forethought to what they were doing to the fabric of society at the time. Society is a fragile thing. It is like spun sugar. A beautiful elaborate structure that is a wonder to behold. But touch it without a gentle hand and it disintegrates in front of you. The boomers were all too happy to smash the structure of society when it suited them. Now they lament its passing? The irony is not lost on me.

And as for the yet unstated issue of linkage on a blog... The owner of a blog has the right to link to whatever he chooses. My own blogroll is slanted towards right-of-center blogs about politics. And it is that way because I want it to be. You are free to click through on any link. If you like what you read visit again. If you don't like what you read, don't click through and don't complain to me. The very fact that a link exists on my page is a conscious choice I have made. You're complaints that you don't like a link of mine will get you nowhere with me. I may not (and in fact don't) agree all (or even some of) the time with the authors of the various sites to which I link. (And if you haven't noticed, I don't agree with the various authors who write on my own page!) But I have selected those links because I think there is value to what they say. That value may be thoughtful, it may be humourous; but I find it valuable on some level. I don't apologize for any link on my blogroll. If you don't like the links, don't click through.

I know that this whole issue has likely upset me more than Kevin. And I can't tell you why it should upset me. But it does.

This tirade completed, your Maximum Leader's wa is restored and his even-temper returned.

Carry on.