Preaching to The Choir

PJ O'Rourke wrote an article for the July 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, called "I Agree with Me". In it, he recounts his feelings about listening to conservative talk radio,

Anyway, I couldn't get NPR on the car radio, so I was listening to Rush Limbaugh shout about Wesley Clark, who had just entered the Democratic presidential-primary race. Was Clark a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton?! Was Clark a DNC-sponsored Howard Dean spoiler?! "He's somebody's sock puppet!" Limbaugh bellowed. I agreed; but a thought began to form. Limbaugh wasn't shouting at Clark, who I doubt tunes in to AM talk radio the way I tune in to NPR. And "Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop!" was not a call calculated to lure Democratic voters to the Bush camp. Rush Limbaugh was shouting at me.

Lately I've been wondering about the impact of blogs on their readers and it occured to me that a lot of what goes on is simply reaffirming currently held opinions. It seems we all want to win converts to our own particular views, but mostly what we end up doing is just "preaching to the choir".

Let's take a look at a few examples.
A Collection of Thoughts is a weblog that I visit daily. Take a look at today's post, Recon Robb's Iraq Newsletter. It gives a great description of the kind of combat the soldiers were facing over there last April. Of course, I find it to be fascinating reading because I like to hear about our guys cleaning things up over there. However, if I were someone against the war in the first place, I can't imagine wanting to read the post. Certainly, it isn't going to convince anyone about the merits of the war one way or the other.
LaShawn Barber's Corner is another regular visit for me. LaShawn's post on Afrocentrism practically had me shouting in agreement at the computer monitor. But it isn't going to convince someone if they're already teaching their children that Jesus was a black man.
Matt Margolis' post on the 9/11 Commission, They Collaborated... exposes more of the silliness that we've come to expect from a bunch of grandstanding politicians. But if you buy into the stuff Richard Clarke was trying to peddle in his book you're probably not going to want to see the 9/11 commission being run down.

I agree with the blogs I read regularly and as much as I try to broaden my horizons, it's just too much aggravation to visit the leftward blogs. It just isn't worth it to me to listen to, "George Bush is evil...America is imperialist...blah blah blah". I can hear that from a multitude of places already. Besides, I get aggravated with that kind of thing and yet I would like to be in a position to positively influence opinion.

I'm not sure of the answer. It's human nature to gravitate toward others who hold like views. I've made a somewhat unsuccessful attempt at being balanced, but it's awfully difficult when it seems like so much is riding on the decisions we make as a country and who we decide to elect. The $64,000 question then is this, How can blogs best influence and even change the minds of others?

If you have an answer, I'd like to hear it.

Posted by jdmays at June 16, 2004 07:55 PM | TrackBack