The blinkered blogdom of BNN

One of the sillier aspects of public discourse is you're either a conservative or a liberal.

You have to be.

And that sets all your views in the template. Determines what you read.

Waldo's always been a pretty conservative guy but entertains what pass for liberal views in many areas too. He looks, first and foremost, for ideas and policies that will get things done. But in the South Carolina blogdom we promptly got labeled "liberal' and that was that.

So when we signed up to be tracked by Blognet News we filled in the boxes we felt described Waldo- at least from the choices offered.

Waldo had to apply twice, several months apart, before BNN took any notice, and several months after Waldo started getting tracked the blog started turning up in the Liberal listings of blog influence.

Which was nice, if only to suggest that somebody thought it was worth reading.

Then, after a while longer, it started popping up in the Conservative influence top ten as well.

Now that, we thought, is kind of cool. Crossing those arbitrary lines in readership. We commented on it a number of times.

So yeasterday we noticed the number had bumped up a notch and looked at the two sets of rankings at BNN.

Wow. Waldow as #1 on the Conservative influence top ten.

That stuck us as so improbable that it made us laugh. Really, more influence than the usual top raters on that list? C'mon...and Waldo put up a quick post to that effect.

This morning, a couple of snippy responses in the inbox: one telling us our little joke was over, Waldo was no longer in the Conservative list.

The second was from someone who's apparently at BNN's home office, telling Waldo "you can't sign up to be a liberal and a conservative too. I should have noticed this before and the mistake has been rectified."

Harrumph, harrumph, as Governor Lepetomaine would say. Sounds like folk been asleep at the switch back in the rankings bureau.

We assume BNN's rankings are intended to use some considered data to arrive at a defensible assessment of the influence blogs have in the liberal and conservative sides of the blogdom, define them as they will.

So if a blog from the other side is being read by a lot of liberals, shouldn't it BNN pick that up in its data samples? If they do you'd expect to see it in the influence rankings sometimes.

Like the SC blog "The Conservativist," which has been in the BNN Liberal influence rankings a number of times.

Wonder if those folks will get smacked down by the thought police too?

As for us, we'll carry on in our unblinkered manner. Fame is fleeting and ratings never last.