Get Me Make-up!

Does anyone else discern a suggestion of mascara on this masculine idol?

Who are you calling a Feminist?

In this post, Ann Althouse recently called for feminists to critique sexism in the blog world, prompting this post by Echidne. While in my experience few students will raise their hands if you ask them if they are "feminists," the principle of equality between the sexes that "feminists" work for seems widely accepted.

This question is for my students: why do you think people hesitate to accept the label feminist? What is your impression of modern feminism? Anyone willing to accept the label? To start thinking about virtual rhetoric and online communities, the assignment for Paper Four, read the posts and comments at Atrios's blog and at Kevin Drum's as well. How is this online political community reacting to or policing such speech? Is this an example of dysfunction or a healthy airing out of an issue of concern to many?

The comments are from the generally obstreperous Little Green Footballs site, but here is a sample.

Friday Millyblogging

This is Milly in between outbursts of unquenchable energy. You cannot tire her out. I once held on to her chew-tire for all of a full-length movie while she pretended we were playing tug of war. I ended up giving up before she did, of course.

Peas Post

Ok, maybe I am not "hep" to what you young kids are listening to these days, but I heard this weird song by the Black Eyed Peas. What is the fascination with humps? I mean, is congenital scoliosis all that sexy? And what are "lady lumps"? Is that like some kind of sebaceous cyst? Don't google-images that term--its gets pretty nasty.

Yer blog assignment for Monday....

So for Monday's journal assignment, you are doing a blog post; spend no more than about 45 minutes on it, but you MAY use info others have linked to in the class to complete it, since linking and commenting are the life's blood of the blog world. This means reading and commenting on each other's blogs is something I want you to do. The links to everyone's blogs, or those I have, are to the right of this post.

First, read this piece on finding common ground. Then read the Althouse piece I handed out Wednesday and mark up everything you don't understand, looking up stuff in Wikipedia and Google and Google news and on the right- and left-leaning political blogs like instapundit.com, nationalreview.com and dailykos.com, eschaton.blogspot.com. Then hopefully you will have a better idea who she is and where she fits in the political spectrum. There are also already letters to the editor about her piece, which is another way to get context.

Is she a political hack? (Someone who just parrots the party line?) Or an ethical and independent thinker? Or somewhere in between? Is she hated by anyone? What kind of readers read her blog? What are her credentials? etc.

Then figure out the op-ed. What is her argumentative purpose, who is her specific audience for this article, what common ground does she find with her opponents, and what strategies, observations, appeals, words, in the article itself, does she deploy to convince them?

Bonus extra hard question: Can you figure out where conservatives and liberals differ on the legal and constitutional issues she discusses?

Welcome to ToddBlogg!

OK we are in business. This is the dedicated blog for our class. I will get all your addresses up here for you as soon as I can. What I would like is for you to use your blogs both for class posts, and for anything else you feel like putting up, since I think we can learn from studying how electronic forms of discourse work; how they are both similar and different from other forms of discourse. For example I learned today about one convention by violating it on facebook--I was told that one does not post on one's own wall. This, it was hinted, was very uncool! Yet no one wrote down any rules about it--everyone just knew that it was "not done." There is a word for those who have not learned the rules about an electronic form of discourse: newbie! Those who know the rules but violate them anyway are sometimes called trolls....

One set of conventions characteristic of this form of discourse, of blogging, is a focus on networking and connection--linking to, quoting from, and commenting on other people's blogs. There is also a whole politics of blogrolls--the list of blogs one links to from one's own site. People get really invested and even upset about these things. For us the connection might be a tad artificial, since we are obviously joined only by enrollment, but let's see what kind of community emerges, if any, from this form of communication. Sorry for the long post--another violation of blog etiquette. Long, rambling posts. Time for some poodleblogging.