Video Blogs
TV Shows:
Find Articles On:
Who's onlineThere are currently 48 members and 1803 guests online.
|
Too little room in Dem's Big Tent for LGBT blogs?I've been spending a bit too much of my non-existent free time (read: time I should be sleeping) over on the website of the liberal blogosphere's Great Orange Satan, DailyKos. And whilst there, I tend to gravitate wildly towards any posts about queer issues. Today I saw one tantalizingly titled "DNC thinks LGBT has too many letters?" and checked it out. It seems only a bare handful of queer blogs and bloggers got credentialed for the Democratic National Convention in August. One of them is Pam's House Blend, a widely respected political blog run by Pam Spaulding. Two others are also strong political blogs with queer bloggers or site owners, John Aravosis' AMERICABlog.com and ThoughtTheater.com. And the fourth is Andy Towle's Towleroad.com.
John Aravosis, Pam Spaulding, Andy Towle And that's it, kids. Four, two of them only tangentially queer. LGBT political blog The Bilerico Project are the folks who blogged about this on Kos, and they're pretty pissed off.
One commenter even plaintively said that "even AfterElton/AfterEllen" has more political focus than Towleroad. Yeah, not so much. We are a pop culture blog, after all. However much we appreciate the shout-out (and we do), and whatever the demographics of Towleroad's users, the assessment that the site's not political is absolutely not accurate. I'm not even remotely in Towleroad's target demographic (my guess is that shoe-obsessed lesbian bloggers don't feature largely in their marketing strategy), but I read the blog almost every day. It's consistently political, covering world issues including violence against LGBT people, same-sex marriage laws, the right to serve openly in the military, political oppression of queers at home and abroad, and of course, soccer players wearing nothing but towels, which apparently is the problem some folks have with them. 
No, I don't think the issue is that Towleroad got credentialed. They should have been (and if Andy wants to up his diversity cred by including a lesbian blogger on his convention team, I'm available, especially if he needs someone to interview Rachel Maddow, yo). The issue is .... four? Four blogs? Out of more than 120? It's not just that four out of 120 isn't close to the percentage of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people in the United States, let alone the Democratic party, let alone the liberal blogosphere. It's that four years ago, our struggle for civil rights became the scapegoat for George Bush winning the 2004 election. A flood of anti-same-sex marriage ballot measures was blamed for driving conservative and religious right voter turnout to record highs. "God, guns, and gays" became the rallying cry of the right wing, and not only are we the "gays," we're a hefty hunk of the "God," too. And this year again, not one of the three viable Democratic candidates dared to endorse marriage equality, betraying progressive ideals while acknowledging the conventional wisdom — no doubt true, however much I hate to say it — that no candidate can be elected President in this country if he or she supports same-sex marriage rights. Given that big right wing flag that's planted like a stake through our hearts, given that yet again, our civil rights are a political lightning rod, given how we were told to shut up and be quiet four years ago, and four years before that, so as not to scare the "Reagan Democrats" away from us, given that more than a few folks are no doubt cursing California for recognizing marriage equality just in time to make it an election year time bomb yet again... we get four blog credentials? I really think the Big Tent folks can do a hell of a lot better than that for us, considering how much fire — quite a bit of it "friendly" — we keep taking for them.
Submitted by on Fri, 2008-05-30 16:18. |
 Recent Comments
Recent blog posts
|
Welcome to AfterElton.com!
- Login
- Join Now!
News, Reviews & Commentary on Gay and Bisexual Men in Entertainment and the Media
Awesome blog entry Christie!
I really enjoyed your comments about Towelrod as I am always interested in websites that openly reflect their identities without regard to how any particular element might affect their status. If showcasing a bunch of sexy guys in different degrees of dress prevents the site from being recognized for all its other components, screw the DNC. It's their loss, but I am really glad to see you bring it up.
There is a huge difference between trying to use sex to increase traffic or ratings versus a site that seemlessly integrates sexy imagery as a valid item on the menu. I recently lost an advertiser on my barely up and running blog because they deemed that the video of males kissing was unacceptable. I put it up to show what was not being on a certain daytime drama.
I could have taken it down in order keep them, and I thought about it as it was already starting to generate income with barely any content as I've been running behind; however all I needed to do was to remember the reason why I started the site thus leaving everything as it was.
I hope that more people bring their talents to the blogs as there are so many talented people writing about subjects that are not addressed anywhere or are addressed via some messed up lenses.
More from Christie!
Guillermo's Media Guillotine: My take on entertainment, journalism, politics, and popular culture. http://springintoaction.typepad.com
Thank you, Christie
I was just reading the same comments made on The Bilerico Project (which I had never heard of before until seeing this on Queerty) and left a comment on the same exact thing. I didn't think they were being fair to Andy nor to his content or readers. I have read plenty of politcal topics on there. And that the issue should be the number of LGBT blogs credentialed. Now I come over to here and read your wonderfully well written posting and see you making the same point, albeit far better written and said then mine. I had to voice my opinion on their site because I felt after reading it, that they would not be making a fuss about the lack of LGBT represenation if they had been included.
Brandon
http://www.brandonshea.com/
It's easier to control the message when you limit...
...the number of people repeating it.
I'm glad Pam was selected. John is a hack who is prone to extremes. Andy is a good selection because of his traffic.
Bilerico SHOULD be outraged! They should totally have a seat that the table.
This will end up working against the DNC. Now some bloggers will approach this with a "what are they trying to control/keep from us" attitude.
As the "shout-outer" you
As the "shout-outer" you mention in the article, I want to clarify. I said AE has more original political content than Towleroad. I, too, read Towleroad daily and I often get my political news from the site - but I also recognize that 90% of what appears on there is quoting other people's opinions, linking to other journalists' stories, or posting other people's YouTube clips.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I've somehow missed the original editorial thought or first-account journalism on Towleroad. If not, my question is, if the number of available credentials is so limited, why give one to Andy when they could have given it to another blog that frequently gets quoted on Towleroad anyway?
Jere
...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.
--Richard Dawkins
Very valid point on first-account journalism as a litmus test
I had not thought about the first-account journalism barometer for consideration and your post here makes me think that it is one that should carry weight as originality (with scope and an audience) might be more "worthy" in principle than say a blog that fully consolidates the work of other sources.
My stream of consciousness tends to agree with you that one (or actually many more for me) of the blogs whose articles get posted by Towleroad should have received credentials, but I think that what Towleroad may very well merit a place at the table too.
I can't opine on the potential misquote, but what I think is most important about the blog entry is the general point that too few LGBT blogs are receiving credentials to this little fete. I don't have the tools to determine which ones those should be, and that might make for a great article as we could all put forth suggested criteria and by doing so may be helping out the LGBT community by making other readers aware of the options out there.
Guillermo's Media Guillotine: My take on entertainment, journalism, politics, and popular culture. http://springintoaction.typepad.com
I think the real question...
I think the real question should be, why so few credentials for LGBT blogs -- the powers that be always benefit when we waste time fighting with each other over a limited resource. While I accept there's a certain limitation on how many blogs can fit into whatever space they're allotting, I'm still questioning not who among us but how many of us, total, got credentialed.
As to Towleroad's original political content, I think Andy does a pretty good job of slipping the politics in with the eye candy in the finest "spoonful of sugar" tradition. It's steady, and it's also subversive. I've been reading Towleroad for years now, and if anything, I think they've gotten more political, not less. Some of this is just about style, not substance; they present their politics in a gilded format that may not "read" as politics to those of us who read the wonkier blogs.
But again, bottom line: it's not who, it's how many.
One-Two Punch
Just watch HBO's "Recount" last night and then read this post today. The whole electoral process stinks. Of course, I don't have a better solution, so I just try to stay as active as possible. Going to the Texas State Democratic Convention in Austin next weekend and hoping to make it to the National Convention.