You’re Not Punk and I’m Telling Everyone»

Kathy G pens a tribute to Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex and observes that blogs are the new punk rock:

I haven’t heard this expressed before, but I can’t believe I’m the first person who’s noticed it/felt it. Punk came along when rock and roll was flabby, stale, boring and corrupt and managed to shock some life back into it. In some ways the situation with the blogosphere is utterly incomparable, because no matter how hard mainstream rock and roll sucked in the mid-70s, our media and our political system today are far more deeply and frighteningly decadent, dysfunctional, and disgraced.

But in the blogosphere, there’s often a blast of rude and righteous anger that’s exhilarating and ultimately, empowering, as there was with punk. There’s also the democratizing, do-it-yourself ethos of the blogosphere. Just as any joker with a computer can bloody well start a blog, any member of the human species who learned three chords on a guitar could start a band. And in both cases the “amateurs” have far outshone the professionals. Just as the Ramones were worth boatloads of Emerson, Lake, and Palmers, Digby is worth any number of David Broders.

A parallel I wholeheartedly embrace! Except, alas, it only works in theory. The hardcore scene that gave me succor — full of boys with Abe Lincoln beards and girls who steal soy milk from the campus cafeteria — is, alas, ridden with Luddites. You’d think that blogs would mean the end of zines, since they cost nothing to produce and are vastly more efficient to distribute, but in the final issue of HeartattaCk, there’s an attack on blogs as inauthentic and soulless. I know the CrimethInc kids have an uncomfortable relationship with blogs, something that has a lot to do with their off-the-grid anarchist politics. Plus you can’t place a stack of blogs at your merch table next to the go-vegan pamphlets and DIY-tampon instructor kits. If blogs are the new punk rock, is punk rock the new Emerson, Lake and Palmer?

You Think It’s More Than Just A Cold»

I thought it was brave of the New York Times to donate space to the under-appreciated issue of the blogger’s health crisis. In our own way, we’re heroes, akin to firefighters, cops and soldiers. Only no one supports us.

Luckily, one person notices the role we play, and that someone is Faith Saile of PRI’s Fair Game, my favorite radio show. (What? You’re still hung up on This American Life like a sucker?) Faith and company solicited my thoughts on this burgeoning epidemic last week, and you can find my thoughts here, about 10 minutes in, after some Scandinavian politician drones on and on about how he’s sooooo depressed.