Prometheus 6

Terrance links to Mother Jones' Meet the New Bosses.

"It's a very conscious effort to build a power structure," says Gross, the former Dean staffer who's now advising John Edwards. "These are people who are not just blogging, but who are thinking very sophisticatedly about what the Republicans did for 20 years to get to the point of being able to dominate the cultural discourse."

In many ways, says Gross, "it's the oldest story in the book. The establishment sort of loses its bearings, loses its compass, and from the bottom people come up, get involved, and make their way into the centers of power." He laughed. "Then in 20 years someone's going to come along and lop off all our heads."

Talking about blogs, of course.

I am pretty conflicted about this whole process. I really would like to be able to insert a few discussions, a few ideas, into the agora for broad discussion. I don't much feel the need to compel particular conclusions, only particular considerations. This makes the "blogging is open to everyone" storyline very attractive.

Thing is, I don't believe it. I used to believe it because it used to be true. And I hate to say that out loud because this citizen's discussion is kind of new and kind of fragile.

Okay, anyone can start a blog. But does anyone believe the mainstream blogosphere would exist in its current form, would wield the force it currently does, if media professionals weren't involved from the beginning?

Which brings me to Black bloggers, as in bloggers that focus on issues as they manifest in the Black communities. And the issue in this case is, how do you we access that pipeline?

Ha. Like I got an answer. But I know what the answer ain't, which is trying to write your way into, say, the Huffington Post. There's no interest in Black folks' issues except as they impact (or upset) mainstream rhetoric. And you're not going to make a BKos (Black Kos), and you're not going to make Black Talking Points Memo or Black Eschaton. There's no more oxygen in those rooms.

Besides, a whole bag of Black folks are in those environs already. That gets me, because if you listen you'd never know that. With all the donations MoveOn.org has, all the participants on dKos, you'd think folks would just know some of that is Black folks. Especially since some dKos folk have made a specific issue of their presence. But truth...think of what it would take to become an A-lister on MySpace. And (god, I hate this neologism) the blogosphere is probably a little bigger than MySpace.

I don't know, maybe my issues don't apply to anyone else. I don't play nice; I ignore trivial disputes based on word selection, and that seems to be the major mode of dispute on the net. People say something cute and you blow past it in order to hew to the topic, folks don't always want to talk to you after that. I can't help but take the position that influence that is given to you isn't yours.

But I also see that (god, I hate this neologism) cyberspace isn't fully colonized. I'm not writing it off, obviously. I'm just not clear, given my reading around black blogs, that politics is even where most Black folks want to go. We need to go there, at least to have a foot in the door. But I don't think most Black folks feel worthy to participate in the general political discussion as whole Black human beings.