Blog Feuds and Blog Mininetworks
Jeff Goldstein has been left out of the Conservative Blogads Mininetwork. When I learned that, I wrote John Hawkins to say that I thought Goldstein should have been included.
But then I saw that in a comment to his own post, Jeff says that it would be pointless for him to write Hawkins about it, saying: “Hawkins and I had a feud a while back. When he created his conservative grapevine, he left me out of that as well.”
I searched Jeff’s site to see what feud he was talking about, since I evidently missed it when it happened. I see there was some sort of flap (see here and here) between John and Jeff about a segment Jeff and Bill Ardolino did on their radio show. And I scrolled back through a few more posts and saw Jeff mocking John in a few posts (like here, here, and especially here), and realized that my e-mail to John probably wasn’t going to go anywhere.
I don’t mean to take sides in that flap, since I don’t know much about it. But I feel your pain, Jeff. There’s some sort of Legal Blogads Mininetwork which I think my site would be a perfect fit for — but it’s run by Jeralyn Merritt, with whom I had a little flap of my own a while back. I have no regrets about my part in it; my criticisms of her behavior were echoed by Armed Liberal, who called her selective editing of posts “Orwellian.” I thought I had handled the matter in a rational manner, and invited her to respond. When she did, in a comment to one of my posts, Jeralyn told me: “Feel free to stop reading TalkLeft any time now.” And I did.
Sometimes this blogging stuff is like high school, huh?
I think the chances of my being included in Jeralyn’s network are about the same as Jeff’s chances of being included in John’s. Will I lose out on advertising as a result? Sure. But I’d do everything the same way all over again.
In any event, I’m happy to be in the Conservative Blogads Network, and I always hate to see two bloggers I like in any kind of feud — and I still wish Goldstein were included. Nobody has done better work on the Katrina blame game in the past couple of weeks — and he does find a way to make the conversations with John Merrick’s Ghost funny every time — which, as he has pointed out, takes work.
So go send him a few bucks and leave him a nice comment. But don’t get on Hawkins’s case either. As far as I’m concerned, they’re both good guys.
UPDATE: But if you like blog feuds, you have to read through the comments at this post at Ace’s. It’s one of the funniest fights I have ever seen.