This blog is brought to you by…
: Eric Olsen quotes Christopher Locke on his view of blogs and so-called gonzo marketing. I read his book and it didn’t click with me until I got to one word: “underwriting.” Locke’s idea — which I’ve been pitching to most anybody who’ll listen — is that instead of intrustive advertising, the wise marketer will recognize the power of blogs and join that power by joining the community. Instead of buying ads on blogs (which we’d all love, but which would not work even if it happened… witness other failed Internet ad movements; we will be spared that humiliation thanks to timing) the wise marketer will recognize a community of shared interest and will underwrite that community, will help make it possible, will say by that act “we share an interest and affection for this community.” Thus the marketer joins with the audience and stays on the edge of buzz. If this works, it will start with special-interest blogs. And if it works, it will spread. It won’t be a way to get rich, but it will be a new layer of advertising and marketing that has not been discovered yet. It will be a new way to build a relationship of true value with the audience, the consumers, us. Would I look kindly on a company that helps bring us Layne, Welch, Johnson, Denton, et al? Yes… even moreso than a company that helps bring us palaver about poetry on NPR. I buy it.
: Note, too, Wired.com’s story on Macromedia experimenting with employee blogs. [Note as well that the story gives credit where credit is due, to William Quick, on the coining of Blogosphere.]
Bang
: So John Ashcroft now says that owning a gun is a God-given or at least Constitution-given right.
And now our various well-armed professors in Blogdom — Reynolds and Volokh to name two — are grinning and gloating.
I dare to disagree.
And that realization struck me like a wet slap in the face — or more like a pistol butt to the skull.
Now that I had become a hawk, I was wondering — fearing — just how far my rightward transformation would go. Would I start admiring Ronald Reagan? Would I schedule my nights around watching Bill O’Reilly? Would I vote down school budgets for sport? Would I start wearing short-sleeved shirts? Would I get a gun?
No.
To me, guns are a fundamental dividing line of civilization.
I don’t understand why anyone would want to own a gun. Guns are not fun; they are not macho; they are dangerous. I spent too many years as a reporter watching what guns did. I was glad when my gun-toting next-door-neighbor moved and took his arsenel with him for I always dreaded an accident. I fear guns.
I will never own one. If you want to, well, I may not understand but I can’t stop you.
But I don’t see why you would be against licensing and basic government control — until you are either (a) a criminal or murderer or Robert Blake or (b) an anti-government nut in the lineage of McVeigh and now Helder. Especially now, in the age of terrorism — imported and domestic — and violent crime, it all the more important for us to gain any control we can over guns and to try to keep them out of the hands of all the dangerous nuts on our streets: the next McVeigh or Helder, the next assassin of Reagan or Brady or Lennon. It is a matter of safety. It is a matter of civilization.
Stating the obvious
: Chomsky is such a dork.
Hobo
: I’ve been mean, angry, and grumpy the last couple of days; spared you the mood. Don’t say I never did nothing for you.
