WHY BE NORMAL?

Digby links to Billmon's pithy post-mortem on blogging in today's L.A. Times:

Even as it collectively achieves celebrity status for its anti-establishment views, blogging is already being domesticated by its success. What began as a spontaneous eruption of populist creativity is on the verge of being absorbed by the media-industrial complex it claims to despise.

In the process, a charmed circle of bloggers — those glib enough and ideologically safe enough to fit within the conventional media punditocracy — is gaining larger audiences and greater influence. But the passion and energy that made blogging such a potent alternative to the corporate-owned media are in danger of being lost, or driven back to the outer fringes of the Internet.

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When I say blogging is headed for a kind of commercialized senility, I'm talking primarily about political blogs — those that have, or claim to have, something to say about government, economics, foreign policy, etc. Not surprisingly, these are the blogs most likely to show up on the media's radar screen.

Media exposure, in turn, is intensifying an existing trend toward a "winner take all" concentration of audience share. Even before blogs hit the big time, Web stats showed the blogosphere to be a surprisingly unequal place, with a relative handful of blogs — say, the top several hundred — accounting for the lion's share of all page hits.

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That world of inspired amateurs still exists, but it's rapidly being overshadowed by the blogosphere's potential for niche marketing. Ad dollars are flowing into the blogosphere. And naturally, most are going to the A-list blogs. As media steer readers toward the top blogs, the temptation to sell out to the highest bidder could become irresistible, and the possibility of making it in the marketplace as an independent blogger increasingly theoretical.

In a word, yeah. What he said. We're in danger of having simply created another media class.

What drives me as a B-list blogger are two things: my horror at this obscene war, and the sheer impossibility of people making it in this current "ownership" economy. Because, after all, there are no jobs.

Well, what's a worthless drain on society supposed to do? Kill myself, thus keeping down the surplus population (as Ebenezer Scrooge might suggest)? Believe me, some days it looks like the most viable option.

I blog so I don't kill myself. I'm curious to see what happens when I stop.

The top bloggers tend to be well-paid white-collar types with either techie backgrounds or post-graduate academic credentials. All I have is my own voice - and a quirky one, at that. I resent being such a peripheral voice in the discussion if it's by virtue of things like my gender, my lack of formal education and my ever-shrinking social status. (A few people have told me my, uh, language is "a problem." Hey, suck my dick.)

I have no idea where I fit into the larger blogging world; for the most part, I feel invisible. I guess that's a good thing, because I still write like someone with nothing left to lose.

I mean, really: What else is left? In another week, I won't even have a couch.

Lately, what with the milestone birthday approaching and all, I find myself wishing I'd been capable of being a little less stubborn, a little more willing to sell out. I really do. It's lonely, being an iconoclast - and I've been one as long as I can remember.

I always wanted to be normal, and I never pulled it off. Not once, no matter how hard I tried. So maybe it's time I embraced being a misfit.

This really good astrologer I know (I used to write for him) just sent out the Libra birthday 'scope. Although he didn't write it specifically for me, he may as well have:

I see a metaphor here for coming into your own. But looking at the charts for Libra as the next few weeks unfold -- charts that are highly influential in your story for the remainder of the year, and which promise to reshape your life entirely -- there are many other factors. Yet none of this may seem believable, in part because for so long there has been considerable pressure on Virgo (a blind spot in your chart) that has likely riddled you with worry, with the sense of events out of your control, or just simply feeling overwhelmed and totally out of balance.

Now, balance is an interesting issue for Libra, and it's something of a Fig Newton. You never do know what's ground up and put into those cookies. And much that happens in your life in the name of balance is really a disguise for issues surrounding living decisively and being willing to forego one reality for another. The problem is that in withholding action or attempting to reach the middle ground, you are often denied opportunities that would otherwise be open to you. An old Greek dude encoded the idea of the Golden Mean a couple of thousand years ago, but it turns out he was just an Average Joe. You are not any kind of Average Joe or Jane; you are, so far as astrology is concerned, an intensely passionate, attractive, creative and opinionated person. The products of your hands and of your mind are always exceptional, because they have the touch of love and the expression of beauty as quality. This is not average but rather, far above average. Why you may have become obsessed with the idea of seeming normal is another discussion, but this would be a very good year to give up those aspirations.

Know when you're aspiring to mediocrity and then reach for something else.

In refusing to be normal (add twenty pairs of quotes around that word) you will, however, have to stand out. You will need to be seen for who you are inside, not as the bright, shining and luminous beacon on the dim horizon, but rather as the pinpoint of focus you are capable of being, and that you know you are on the inside. You will need to give up your fear of being right, and ignore all the spiritual admonitions against it. After one has been wrong or wronged for so long, there comes a time when it's appropriate to be right, steadfast and true. This will of course make you subject to criticism, but we all know it's easier to write a newspaper column than it is to put on a Broadway production. Besides which, you might try the theory that any press is good press. That's not always true, but people have far kinder things to say about you than you may realize.

Well, maybe he's right. I can use all the kindness I can get, these days.

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