Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

If ever America needed a wake-up call about the mythology of blogging, we got it this month.

On Aug. 8, Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont defeated U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary, a triumph widely credited to the rah-rah racket produced by pro-Lamont armies stationed along the Internet.

Indeed, the bloggers had scored big. They had helped vault a local politician to national prominence and cemented the Iraq war as Issue No. 1 in the congressional elections. Not a bad day.

Promising start. I'm not sure how much of Lamont's win can be directly traced to blogs, but they were definitely a factor. However, not all is as it seems. Watch as Kluger pulls a 180:

But their victory was short-lived. Even before the primary, Lieberman announced that, should he lose, he'd still run in November as an independent. This electoral chutzpah effectively rope-a-doped the bloggers and recharged the senator's fabled Joe-mentum. Lieberman's still the man to beat in the general election.

Yes, the famed (ahem) "Joe-mentum." It's worth noting that while Lieberman does lead Lamont in the polls, his lead is slipping away fast - it's dropped by 2 points in under two weeks.

Also, I'm not quite sure that this is "rope-a-dope" so much as "grown man abandons all principles and runs off whining like a petulant child because someone dared to run against him." Mainly because I don't think that the Lieberman people planned to lose the primary (although as clumsy and poorly executed as their campaign has been, it wouldn't surprise me).

Before its premiere, Snakes had been the latest blogger darling, as swarms of online film geeks prematurely crowned it the summer's big sleeper. This hyperventilating fan base even convinced Snakes' distributor, New Line Cinema, to up the movie's rating to R, to ensure a gorier, more venomous snake fest.

But all that clapping and yapping couldn't put enough fannies in the seats. Ticket sales for Snakes' debut barely topped those of Talladega Nights, which was already in its third week.

Interesting shift here.

As most of you probably realize, political and technical blogs only make up a small portion of the blogosphere. The vast majority of blogs tend to be either personal sites with very limited traffic or large, pop culture oriented sites (such as Fark and Memepool). The latter were the sites most responsible for pushing SoaP, and I'm not really sure why we should be tied up with them.

Blah blah, he rambles on about SoaP on a while (Did I mention that I'm actually glad the movie flopped? Not because I have anything against anyone involved with the movie - just because if it was successful, we'd be putting up with goofy Internet campaigns like that all the time).

Although Connecticut and Hollywood are a continent apart, the two events speak volumes about the capriciousness of the blog culture.

Lieberman's boomerang reminds us that voters represent a meager percentage of the total populace -- and that bloggers are an even tinier subset of that group. Consequently, what appears to be a coast-to-coast juggernaut on a 17-inch monitor is, in the real world, simply an elaborate PC-to-PC chain letter -- enthusiastic, but not necessarily the national mindset.

It's here that the article really takes a turn for the stupid. Kluger started the article by indicating that bloggers were largely responsible for Lieberman's ouster as Democratic candidate (over the clamoring of many mainstream pundits and a fair number of politicians, I might add). I'm not quite sure how Lieberman's pathetic little foot-stomping episode qualifies as a loss for the bloggers (Oh, right - rope-a-dope. Never mind).

As I said earlier, I'm not sure how much of Lamont's win can be attributed to bloggers as opposed to general discontent by the voters of Connecticut. However, Kluger is arguing that bloggers were largely (if not solely) responsible, and he's still counting it as a loss. Let me write it in a more logic-friendly way:

P1: Bloggers wanted Lamont to defeat Lieberman in the primaries.
P2: Lamont defeated Lieberman in the primaries.
C1: Therefore, bloggers lost.

Hmm. Nope, still doesn't make any sense. Best that we move on.

OK, he starts in on SoaP again - I think I'll be skipping that part. I'll pick up again at Every Pundit's Comment on Blogs, namely:

Tuckerman hits the problem squarely on its blogging noggin. Ever since the first smarty-pants posted his first unsolicited opinion on the Internet, Americans have become captivated by blog-o-mania -- for good reason. For once, we own and operate our own public medium. Power to the people. Vox populi. Yadda-yadda.

And yet, as the scrambling suits at Lamont headquarters and New Line Cinema now know, it's easy to be seduced by one's own hype, especially when that hype is preceded by a "www." Now it's time to play catch-up ball. Lamont's handlers will have to face a candidate who will surely try to have it both ways on the campaign trail; New Line will have to sell a boatload of popcorn. That's the way the blog bounces.

A brief aside: While the primary may not have been a victory of bloggers over the government establishment, it was definitely a victory of bloggers over the punditocracy.  That's probably why Kluger and his kin seems so touchy. ("What? The proles are actually publishing their own opinions instead of swallowing what we give them? Preposterous!")

As an occasional blogger myself, I'm still wary of the phenomenon. On one hand, it can be liberating to log on and spout off, unencumbered by editorial oversight.

On the other hand, as August 2006 clearly demonstrates, bloggers can just as easily get it wrong. That's worth remembering.

Again, didn't Lamont win the primary? Bah, this is getting tiring. Let's wrap it up.

The whole thing reminds me of child-rearing. As the parent of any toddler can tell you, the younger the child, the louder the screams for attention -- and quite often, the degree of the crisis is in reverse proportion to the decibels of the bellows.

To that end, it's important to remember that the blogosphere is still in its infancy, and like any kid, it needs to be watched very carefully.

Lovely. I'm going to let that last comment go, as I think it more or less speaks for itself.