But this is a MSM piece, with the ability to leave comments (which does not make it a “blog” - you can leave comments at Your Say in the Age.) So, tell me again why this is not directly to do with the badness of sections of the MSM, rather than blogs? After all, we know that MSM writers , while they often presume to comment on the blogosphere, often reveal they haven’t done much blog reading at all.

Isn’t it the ability of unstable people to leave comments which is the issue here?

“Wither the Crusader spirit?”

I can’t work out if you’re missing an ‘h’ there or not!

compared with a few years ago, the right-wing blogosphere devotes far less attention to domestic politics

Or international politics, or politics at all, as far as I can tell. Don’t know what’s happened to the 2003-2004 Iraq boostering or yaying for organised Parties of the Right, it seems to have been subsumed by Koranic study groups and climate change ’scepticism’. Nobody any more loves foreign adventurism or any involvement with the politics of Government—in other words, the bizarre isolationism of old Black Helicopters Steve Edwards was three years before his time. They’re all libertarians now.
Am I the only one left who’ll actually barrack for realist liberal interventionism? Wither the Crusader spirit?

When a court case happened that my sister had to attend (related to a car crash) an article appeared on the paper’s website. Fortunately, people left intelligent and sensitive comments (except one person who was just ridiculous), but I really gritted my teeth before reading them. The quality of comments is very similar on some blogs (do I mention “Bird” - tweet tweet).

Yes, there are good polblogs, but there’s some real hate-filled nutters out there who are obsessed with ideological politics. Nobody learns anything from that stuff.

There’s a lot of social diconnection played out on the blogosphere.

Most of the best written and most interesting US political blogs reside in the feminist blogosphere, not the A list political blogs.

OK, I’ll bite. Would you mind linking a couple of the better ones, pretty please?

If you haven’t read any blogs which actually feature good and engaging writing, then you haven’t looked far enough. Yes, there are fewer Australian ones, but that is a matter of a much lower population.

Also, can we completely get over this idea that blogs = politics or political engagement. They can have this excellent feature. However, this is a subset of blogs. It is not a requirement.

Most of the best written and most interesting US political blogs reside in the feminist blogosphere, not the A list political blogs.

We’d be much the poorer if Australian blogs took on similar roles of partisan organisation. So I’m not at all disturbed if pollies ignore them.

Philip Travers, I implore you — I beg you — to more closely examine your relationship with paragraphing and punctuation.

The full power of the Net would undermine machine politics.

Party apparatchiks therefore handle the net with fireproof tongs.

Apparatchiks want absolute party discipline and voters behaving like the zombies in that famous Apple Ad.

So far, the apparatchiks have maintained control.

One piece of evidence: the fact that Victorian Labor voters blindly elected Stephen Fielding of Family First to the Senate.

With an alert blogosphere, this may not have happened.

Interesting observations about the HuffPost type of blog, j_p_z. With a few exceptions, the US netroots a list type of blog is boring as batshit (I imagine TEH CRUSADERS would have encountered some of that) - ie Kos. Just dreadful partisan puffing composed in about a second flat. That’s why I like blogs like Pandagon and Obsidian Wings where you get interesting arguments written well.

Don’t forget the Inquisition and the IRA.

But isn’t that exactly what makes it sort of unattractive in this medium, and not really all that interesting a part of the blogosphere qua blogosphere? (I can’t believe I just wrote that last phrase.)

I already know in advance what all the ‘writers of note’ are going to say about pretty much anything, long before they say it. I check out the blogosphere because I want to hear what smart people who aren’t of all that much ‘note’ have to say –thoughtful people, frequently quite accomplished in their respective fields, yet squarely off the radar, who have interesting insights and refreshing evaluations of issues partly because they don’t have a professional MSM reputation, or a Punditstan paycheck, to protect.

Just as long as they all duly get their knickers in a knot over TEH CRUSADES.

Also, in the U.S. liberalism has always been vital and central to political culture and debate; liberalism has never been important in Australia.