They came and pulled me out of the audience to appear on a liberal talk-radio show out of L.A. called “The Young Turk.” It was kind of fun, I actually got the Full Fifteen Minutes of Fame.
Then I went back upstairs to watch the “Blogfire” panel, hosted by Stephanie Miller, the liberal talk radio host whose father was Barry Goldwater’s running mate in 1964. Panelists were Duncan, Jerome from MyDD, Chris from AfroNetizen, and David Corn (of davidcorn.com). Stephanie’s funny and kept things moving along.
And then someone in the audience asked The Question. You know, the “Where are the female bloggers?” question. But in this case, she meant literally.
Everyone sort of muttered, because no one wanted to go where only Kevin Drum has dared to tread. Duncan said something gracious, and it could have ended there. Except someone on stage said something about “women political bloggers not being as hardhitting.”
I mean, ordinarially I’m pretty good-natured about this stuff, but What. The. Fuck. Do I strike you as, I dunno, too soft and cuddly to be a political blogger?
I was one of their invited bloggers, sitting there all day in the media section for the past two days, and no one thought to, I don’t know, throw a little estrogen in for balance? They obviously knew I was there for the last-minute radio fill-in…
But all’s well that ends well. I got to blogwhore Stephanie, and who knows? I may be coming soon to a satellite radio station near you.
It was definitely worthwhile TV, the first “blogpanel” I’ve seen on TV which was actually worth watching. I was particularly impressed with Chris Rabb, although a quick trip to his blog (afro-netizen.com) didn’t catch my interest.
The BEST part of the show, BY FAR, was the LONG (15 minutes) comedy act which preceded it from Emily Levine (http://www.emilylevineuniverse.com/), who was absolutely hysterical - the best political comedian I’ve ever seen I think, definitely better than, say, Will Durst, who I like very much.
Stephanie Miller was also quite impressive both as a host and a wit.
Thought I’d throw some fuel on the fire!
It’s a collection of thoughts that the question has provoked.
Maybe if you post cat pictures and talk about Star Wars, you will be considered hard-hitting.
Susie~
Now that you are famouson the radio, you may not be impresssed that you made it into Tompaine.com, but heres a quote:
“As I type talk-radio host Victoria Jones interviews Howard Dean about the filibuster. Susie Madrak of Suburban Guerilla tells me that upstairs Arianna Huffington is delighting the crowd with her criticism of Hillary Clinton’s squishiness on Iraq. “
cheers,
pepys
Yes, cute and cuddly.
“Maybe if you post cat pictures and talk about Star Wars, you will be considered hard-hitting.”
Naw. The rules clearly state: Only boys can do Friday catblogs and discuss Star Wars. Girls who do so will be considered immediately and irretrievably cute and cuddly, warm and squishy.
I also saw the ‘blog panel’. When someone from the audience asked the panel what democrats they liked, they all agreed on Pelosi and Reid. Give me a break!
There’s not one democrat who deserves our support. If we want change, they should all be flushed out!
Face it. Cooties are forever. Unless you have the look of a Today Show hostess, the media panels will continue to shine women on. They also believe Jeff Jarvis is a liberal, even though he has bigger cooties.
“women political bloggers not being as hardhitting.�
Ah, no, thats not what I said. What I said was that the audience of readers on the political blogs was 60% male, and that alot of it was bare knuckles…. Stephanie made the jump, like you, from that to the assumption that I was implying the reason why women are not among the big traffic bloggers in politics is because they can’t handle the bare knuckles. Not so. I was merely raising two points without a conclusion, implying that maybe it’s merely a matter of the majority liking to brawl with eachother. But I think it’s changing, I’ve enjoyed seeing Chris Nolan go after Cox and Milken.
Jerome, yes you did. Now, you may have been mumbling and I didn’t hear what you said immediately before or after you said it, but that’s what you said. Several men in the audience told me they heard the same thing - just in case you’re writing this off as PMS. (Yes, Jerome, most of my readers are men.)
And I didn’t make “an assumption” about anything other than that apparently I was invited to the conference without anyone having actually read my blog. I resent being characterized as something I’m not - soft. If I were, fine. But I’m not.
While I am certainly aware I’m not one of the high-traffic bloggers, I did receive the Koufax for Most Worthy of Wider Recognition and I sort of thought - oh, I dunno, that my peers in the blogosphere would be gracious enough to actually try to help me GET that wider recognition. I’m also listed as No. 31 on Blogstreet’s Most Influential Blogs - which, considering my modest traffic, is noteworthy. (My other rankings were thrown off by the site change, but they’re not bad. For a girl, I mean.)
I’m not advocating tokenism, either; if you read this blog other than when you’re mentioned, you’d know that. (For one thing, I resent the easy implication of “not quite good enough” that goes with it.) But if it’s going to be done on the basis of “diversity” anyway (Chris Rabb complains about being the token black man on blog panels, but I don’t see anyone suggesting HE didn’t really deserve to be up there with the Big Boys - some minorities are more equal than others, I suppose), then I’m certainly going to push to get my own piece of the media pie.
Especially when I was one of the few invited bloggers who actually bothered to show up. I mean, damn.