Politics didn't figure into Charles Johnson's decision to start blogging. Rather, the prolific jazz performer and freelance web developer created his own blog in February of 2001 "mainly to get some experience with the technology involved," with Little Green Footballs starting out "pretty much a techie blog" and remaining so until 9/11 prompted its founder to shift attention from widgets to policy. That a previously-obscure individual quickly gained a massive readership by the direct means of the internet served to highlight the nature of things to come; when Johnson took a leading role among the bloggers who exposed as forgeries the documents put forth by CBS in 2004 allegedly proving Vietnam-era wrongdoing on the part of Bush, the revolutionary nature of the new medium became more evident still, not least to Dan Rather. His co-founding that same year of the pioneering conservative blog network Pajamas Medium contributed somewhat to the shape that was to be taken by the early political blogosphere and its right wing in particular. Having spent years in its service, though, Johnson nonetheless officially broke with the conservative movement in November after finding himself increasingly disgusted with certain of its characteristics, prompting a similar move from Andrew Sullivan and a great deal of further animosity from many of those with whom he'd previously collaborated in support of a hawkish foreign policy and certain other conservative causes.
I made Johnson's acquaintance a few months back when the two of us found ourselves investigating and otherwise hassling Robert Stacy McCain, the conservative commentator who co-authored a book with Palin ghostwriter Lynne Vincent while having elsewhere written under a Confederate-inspired pen name for the white supremacist publication American Renaissance and otherwise engaged in behavior one might expect from, say, a white supremacist. We spoke recently about the future of political blogging and its potential to compensate for the deficits of the nation's mainstream commentators:
BB: Do you think there's a significant difference in the way the mind develops when it does so under circumstances by which it can access virtually any information it might desire and with virtual immediacy, as has been the case with those of us who are under 30 and who thus had access to the internet through our formative years?
CJ: I think there has to be a difference, the way that there's this constant jumping from one topic to another. Twitter is the paradigm of that right now. You get nothing in depth; you get 140 characters on a subject. On the other hand, a lot of those short bursts of knowledge, if you start digging in, following links to sources, you can get into quite a bit of depth. That's assuming you want to. So it's a complicated subject and I don't think it's all negative.
BB: Perhaps two things are happening here; there's a fundamentally superior ability to access, cross-reference, and verify information...
CJ: I think that's the real upside to it. I remember what it was like before the internet, trying to research things. Going to the library, trying to look up newspaper articles that were stored on microfiche - significant barriers to gathering information. Now you just Google it and you have more knowledge than you can use.
BB: And the downside is the possibility of a "new orality" whereby you have things like YouTube and these other oral-visual sources of information being utilized heavily by many people who decades ago might have instead engaged in more literate behavior. Like the difference between the output of the classical Greeks before and after the onset of literacy - those without a firm grounding in text are at a very noticeable disadvantage in terms of consistency, which is a necessary component of successful abstract thought.
CJ: Right, as well as just simple critical thinking, and to be able to get in depth on something and to express one's self clearly. There's two classes developing; those who understand the value of it, and those who just consume it without taking advantage of that value.
BB: Certainly. And the first class has the opportunity to challenge the structure itself, which is really what has to be done. People like Thomas Friedman will be there forever because they're already famous and the New York Times doesn't care that he has no real insight. If a great number of blogs were to coordinate on bringing pressure to bear on the media at large...
CJ: And it's already happening. We're in the middle of some kind of change, but for now it's undirected, unfocused. I don't know if anyone can direct it, with so many avenues of information. What you're talking about is kind of what we intended with Pajamas Media. The intent was to take the best aspects of the blogosphere and focus them more on issues that were important. Unfortunately, it quickly turned into just another right-wing parrot organization. But I think it's a great idea, and it's worth attempting again.