The Influential Bloggers

The big boys are talking about this, because the wingnut blogs are supposedly moaning and groaning that they don't get the attention they deserve from the wingnut establishment. Atrios points out that the wingnut blogs don't add anything new to the wingnut stew and Kos adds that they are not very good at gathering donations which is all the powers-that-be really care about.

So are the lefty bloggers given more attention by the Democratic party, say? I wouldn't know, of course, as I am not given the attention I deserve. Yet, anyway. I even e-mailed someone offering to cover the treatment of women in the Democratic campaigns and got no adulation in return. None whatsoever.

But once in a while I hear something on the radio or read something in a newspaper that I had said on my blog. It could be that someone else thought the very same idea independently and probably is, but I like to think that I sowed a few tiny seeds or laid a few tiny eggs on this here blog. It is also very clear to me that what is truly important about the whole blogging community is not the bloggers but the readers and commenters. That's where the next political wave is born and blogs really just give all these insightful and energetic people a place to gather. I have learned an enormous amount reading comments threads and not all of it has been about sexual customs I didn't know existed.

As a female god (=goddess) blogger I also feel the responsibility to think about blogging influence from a feminist angle, and this time not from the angle whether we women bloggers exist or matter at all but from a different kind of angle: how to relate to being influential. Not that I am, especially, but how would I relate to being influential if I were?

I would love it. Give me all the influence you can gather and I will revel in it. For a long time I was a modest goddess, one who looked for someone else smarter and more aggressive to lead the fight, but I have decided that those who are smarter are not very aggressive and those who are aggressive are not very smart, with the exception of all those other great feminist bloggers, and therefore I should just charge in and throw punches with great abandon. And I invite all of you modest people out there to do the same. That's the way things get done and then we will all be influential.