A bunch seem to be unemployed. Many are extremely vicious and ignorant. They argue like idiots. If you say, "Saddam is not a terrorist," they say, "What an idiot. So you don't think terrorism is a problem?"
Some are very smart tech types who can write and write endless tracts, typically with no knowledge of the subject matter at all. This impresses the others. This sounds like the sort W. is talking about.
There is a kind of project by the right wing to define "the Blogosphere" in a way that excludes ill-behaved lefts -- people like me who reflect their nastiness right back at them. (me nasty I know it's hard to believe) They usually pretend I don't exist, even though mine is one of the most visited sites. (I'd say I just make it into the top ten of liberal sites.)
I've got links to 127 liberal/left bloggers on my site. I've done a fair amount of searching for more. There are about two dozen who are a little too wacky for me (i.e., there stuff is a mixture of conspiracy theories, porn, and base invective spewed every which way). I have found very few that are very far to the left. I'm about as rad as it gets. But there is no lack of left- liberal sites. Some of them are great fun to read, or very expert in certain areas. The Guardian piece is a little dumb because it fails to recognize most of the liberal side of this activity. You might even say hypocritical, since the authors advertise their own site but mention few others.
mbs
Kevind Robert Dean:
Why have Americans started to vilify the Guardian? Why does the actor John Malkovich want to kill the Independent foreign correspondent Robert Fisk? And why is the Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman writing with a new-found attention to detail? Answer: Fisk, Krugman and the Guardian are all victims of the latest web-publishing phenomenon: blogging. ----
I think the article misses the mark a bit by attributing this to the medium (i.e. blogging technology). It makes its point by refereing only to two cases of right-wing pundits. But there are numeorus left blogs (including one of our own Max S.) and left web sites in general, so the technology does not expaion the popularity of the right wing/libertarian sites.
The article misses the fact that computer professional tend be more conservative than most other professions - a fact that I attribute to two factors. First is cognitive makeup required for programming. Contrary to the frequently expressed claims to creativity - computer programming involves meticulous following of conventional rules to the letter, and routinization of every task. The cognitive skills required to do that are not only antithetical to freewheeling creativity, but they are also the main building blocks of the conservative mind-set. Second, is the programming subculture - which is prediminantly white and male and success oriented, and thus tends to be inwardly promiscuous and outwardly conservative (i.e. the "our guys can do what they want, but everyone else must follow the rules" thing).
So what you have is a bunch of not very creative, anal, but overly ambitious individuals who are further socialized into a highly competitive occupation that highly values conventionalism and routine. No wonder that the end result is a bunch of anal, overpaid yahoos who think that are on the top of the world, and despise the conventional enemies of the system that feeds them (the Orwell's "minute of hate" thing). This is your arch-typical libertarian/conservative - libertarianism gives him grounds for demanding freedom for himself, consevatism is an outcome of his conventionalism which direct himm to bey the rules of the system.
Wojtek