About last night...

Last night I was tired and I violated my golden rule of rants which is think before hitting post in the comments at BSB. I'm not sorry for what I wrote, I have this tendency to let stuff go by because sometimes it just isn't worth it to comment. Yet I am human and I will agree 100% with something Tim Russo told me in an email not long ago, I take this stuff seriously. Probably too seriously at times.

I love blogging, I want more people to blog and more people to read blogs, I also try very hard to be credible. For me if bloggers want to gain respect and have more of an impact they have to be credible. Part of being credible is honesty. I don't blog to attack people or to demean people or to make myself appear I am better than anyone else. Yet way to much time is spent on Ohio blogs in doing that. Then those same bloggers bitch about why they don't receive better treatment from the media or political parties/candidates. To me that's a well "duh" moment. If you treat people like crap, chances are they are going to respond with the same attitude.

I've seen people that I used to respect treat other people pretty shitty. I've seen people that I used to respect who claimed to believe in ethics demonstrate that they had two standards of behavior, what they expected from everyone else and what they themselves had to follow. Not just over this whole ODP dinner fiasco but related to Learn and Earn and others. If it's a big deal that a Republican doesn't make it obvious as a part of his campaign that he is a Republican why isn't it a big deal if a Constitutional amendment campaign doesn't mention what it is really about? If it is bad for a Republican blog to slam a Democratic candidates wife than it should be bad for Democrats to do so? So much of the bullshit that gets pointed at "Oh look at those bad Republican bloggers" can be seen being done by some of the Democratic bloggers as well. They are no different, except obviously in their minds it's different when they do it.

Senator Obama didn't help anything by buying tickets for bloggers who would not pay their own way to the $150.00 per person dinner. I'm not upset because I wasn't invited. I would not have gone. This doesn't stem from some "sour grapes" attitude it stems from being tired of being lied to and being tired of having these people assume they represent us "all" they don't. It's being tired of having people see these larger traffic blogs and assume that all of us are like that. I think it's crappy that Chris Redfern doesn't ever email me back, I think it's crappy that Senator Obama didn't even have the courtesy to email me back. I think what Tim Russo has been doing is crappy. His goading of Sherrod Brown and Brian Rothenberg has been immature and unprofessional. Most of the bloggers who have written about how horrible Brian is are in part responsible for what happened thru their own behavior and their continuing to allow this to happen. If you don't like what is happening stop being a part of why it is happening.

I was told the day after it was announced that Obama was buying tickets for bloggers to attend this dinner that Tim was not going to be allowed to attend. I didn't post about it because Tim was posting that he was attending and despite me having some major issues with what he was writing at the time I am not one of the bash Tim Russo bunch. I also thought there was a chance I was being played so that I would post about it, that's happened before. So I was played, either way you look at it. Either by the person who told me Tim wasn't going to attend or all of the people that knew Tim wasn't going to yet kept up the pretense too.

Will these bloggers lose sleep over my feeling that I don't hold several of them in high regard anymore? I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter, I don't have ego issues where I feel I'm that important. Yet, I don't regret what I wrote last night, because by continuing to shut up and not say what I really thought? I was losing sleep over it, and I was sending the message that by not saying something I thought this was all okay.

It's not okay.