{"id":398,"date":"2008-09-16T19:20:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-16T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/2008\/back-in-the-blog-life-again\/"},"modified":"2008-09-17T10:50:30","modified_gmt":"2008-09-17T14:50:30","slug":"back-in-the-blog-life-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/2008\/back-in-the-blog-life-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Back in the Blog Life (again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, Hai (sorry reading lots of Lolcatz<\/a> lately). Anywho, remember me?<\/p>\n

So I’ve been on unapproved blog leave of absence lately. I’m sorry.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of excuses I could give – good ones! Really! I got engaged (and celebrated by fab pals!) I had visitors. I’m exploring interweb advertising and other commercial ventures. I’ve been sick. A moose ate my bloggy post.<\/p>\n

But the truth is… I’ve been too mad and sad to blog. Too mad to blog? Whaaa? Blogs are for mad, right? Too sad to blog? Like that’s ever stopped me (ahh, that reminds me I really do need to post Washwords and the Single Parents Mingle Adventure! yee haw). Too scared? Well surely my bloggy friends could help.<\/p>\n

But I’ve been struggling with this one – being scared, and mad and sad about… politics. My entire career(s)<\/a> (whether as a journalist or a “govvie”) have trained me to be apolitical, non-partisan, non-personal.<\/strong> But now…things are changing. The political IS the personal (take abortion, feminism, religion… to name a few issues in both categories) and the stakes are higher (google “Sarah Palin and Jews for Jesus” or “equal pay for equal work, McCain” or “Sarah Palin, “I’d be AGAINST<\/strong> (thanks mom, for editorial correction!)\u00a0 abortion even in cases of rape, even if it was my daughter” or creationism in schools or… wow, there are too many to go on, if you’re not sure this election matters.) It is hard to be quiet when you are so mad and hard to talk about other things when this is so important Shout-out to two Megs the Meg<\/a> <\/span>who pointed this out and the Meg that wrote it<\/a><\/span>, both of whom are fabulous women writers I love and respect, for explaining this campaign addiction\/obssession\/need-it-want it so well. I DON’T hope it passes.<\/p>\n

Another fab woman writer\/friend, Andrea, puts it like this in: On the Spiritual Perils of Religion Writing: Q&A with Rod Dreher : ReligionWriter.com<\/a><\/p>\n

As a journalist, writing in the first person is still pretty new for me. But starting this site, blogging professionally and generally entering the Web 2.0 world is essential for my professional survival, and reading Romenesko, the blog-stlye round-up of media-industry news, reminds me of that fact daily. On the one hand, it\u2019s freeing to write from the heart, share my opinions and borrow from my own life when I need an interesting lead. On the other hand, I have this feeling of creeping out onto a frozen pond, never quite sure when the ice will break, and I\u2019ll fall through, suddenly finding every opinion I\u2019ve admitted to online has now become a personal or professional liability.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the main danger: Market forces are pushing us journalists to write more personally. But do we know what the hell we\u2019re getting ourselves into<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, here I am, using my shield of quasi-anonymity to say loudly, clearly:
\nI am angry. So angry. Angry that I (and other women) are being called “sexist” for ummm using our brains not our “like omg, she’s a girl too” childlike selves to think about the election, raise questions.<\/p>\n

I am scared. More scared than I was with George W. even that we could have leaders who not only are for overturning Roe v. Wade (allowing abortion,yes, even in cases of rape or incest) but who do so with a smile and song about the change they’ll bring to America. I’m scared that Palin used her church pulpit to stand next to and applaud leaders spewing hate<\/a>, to tell folks what to vote for, to tell folks that war and her economics and policies were divinely inspired<\/a> ( some of this preaching on taxpayer money). I’m scared for my young niece (age 1) and for myself and my loved ones for what we know too well happens when anyone non-evangelical (let alone not Christian) is cast as outsider, to be feared, to be mistrusted.<\/p>\n

I am saddened. I get that people can have different opinions, really I do. I get that intelligent people can disagree. But to see my sisters, my friends, YOUNG women, JEWISH women even, blogging and writing about “the exciting change” that Sarah Palin brings to this race, I am sad. When I see people saying “whaaaa? he’s not Bush again,” I feel sad. And angry. And scared. And sad again.<\/p>\n

So now I’ve said it, and now back to your regularly scheduled blog. About Words and Washington. And occasionally fear, and sadness and anger, too; because it matters. A lot.<\/p>\n

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Oh, Hai (sorry reading lots of Lolcatz lately). Anywho, remember me? So I’ve been on unapproved blog leave of absence lately. I’m sorry. There’s a lot of excuses I could give – good ones! Really! I got engaged (and celebrated by fab pals!) I had visitors. I’m exploring interweb advertising and other commercial ventures. I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[898,766,622],"tags":[926,922,924,927,358,921,399,908,923,53,925,920],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bonus-material","category-wash","category-words","tag-anger","tag-apolitical","tag-fear","tag-leave-of-absence","tag-mccain","tag-nonpolitical","tag-obama","tag-palin","tag-personal","tag-politics","tag-sadness","tag-sarah-pallin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}