Seven Things

Annie tagged me with a wandering blog meme last week. I’m just now getting to it. The rules are simple. I link to Annie and then I reveal seven weird or random things about me. So here you go…

1) The first time my name appeared in print, it was in the Letters section of an ill-fated comic book called The Comet.
2) I’ve never seen Casablanca.
3) I’ve often had the urge to jump on the stage during a live play and start interacting with the scene, just to see what the actors do.
4) I sometimes can taste words.
5) I believe places can be haunted but I don’t believe in sentient ghosts.
6) I’ve won more than one multi-table poker tournament in Vegas but the winnings were small.
7) I’ve eaten javelina.

I’m supposed to tag 7 more people. I’m not going to. I doubt 7 people will even read this post as all my work is being done at Donklephant these days.

News About Maverick Views

Here’s the news: Justin Gardner of Donklephant has invited me to become a fulltime writer for the site rather than just an occasional poster. He’s looking to diversify content and make sure a wider spectrum of opinions are available throughout this election season and beyond. I’m happy to say, I’ve taken him up on the offer and will now be Donklephant’s regular right-of-center voice (except, of course, when I’m left of center or just out in left field).

Beginning next week, my political posts will be at Donklephant. I’ll post links to them here at Maverick Views but I will not be cross-posting. Maverick Views itself will stay active but the focus will be much less political and far more cultural and personal. Consider this site my private reserve where I retreat from politics a bit and let my mind ponder other matters.

The good news for those who like reading my words is that my commitment to Donklephant means I won’t be disappearing from the blog world again anytime soon. Of course, you’ll have to visit two sites to get the full breadth of my opinions, but isn’t that a small price to pay for knowing you’ll be able to read new posts from me almost every day? Please, don’t answer that.

See y’all around the ‘sphere.

'Cause I Can't Control Myself

Thanks to some well-placed begging, I've been invited to ruin join the outstanding team at PoliGazette. My first post is here.

I'll of course still be filling up Maverick Views with my thoughts and also posting the occasional rambling at Donklephant. When it comes to blogging, I seem to be all or nothing.

Donklephant Service Announcement

Over at Donklephant, site-founder Justin Gardner is having a little fundraiser. The goal is to raise a modest $3,000 to upgrade the site, purchase a more secure hosting plan and even pay a couple bloggers a little stipend to help keep the content constantly updated. If you’re not a reader of Donklephant, you’re missing out on the best Centrist-leaning group blog. If you are a reader, consider dropping a few dollars into the collection jaw.

You can read all about the efforts here.

Out Here -- A Post About Very Little

I have pulled in my head and stopped listening to the world of blogs. Maybe “pulled in” is the exact wrong phrase. Maybe I should say I’ve stuck my head out from the world of blogs – for when you are not immersed in the daily vitriol and passion and clinging conformity and desperate nonconformity and all the other hardness that is the blogosphere, you start seeing that the rest of the nation, the world, cares oh so little about so much of what boils blood on blogs.

There is a willful ignorance out here, sure, but there is also a comforting acceptance too, a softness to human interactions where personal political opinion is secondary to just about every other qualifier. Out here I am not defined by the force of my opinions so I feel less pressure to be firm. I don’t have to be coherent. I don’t have to be pithy or wise or exuberant. I can wallow in the deep confusion to which us humans are naturally confined.

You see, what’s really going on is that I am in transition – this blog’s sputtering is just a reflection of swirling events out here. Nothing tragic. Nothing even worth mentioning. Just one of those times when life progresses faster than the spirit can change and you’re left scrambling to realign the pieces in a pattern that makes sense.

I’ve got a few pieces stuck back together. Soon, I just know, I’ll be back here with renewed vigor, speechifying away with nary a remembrance of my time out here where political opinion is not the stuff of polite conversation. But I thought I’d write a post about it – just so I can point back and say “see, I CAN exist happily in a world of subdued ideals and formless opinions.” I can – but only when I’m in flux.

Where's Alan?

As everyone has surely noticed, Maverick Views is experiencing a blogging drought. There's a little blog-fatigue involved but, mainly, I've just been a busy, busy guy.

I've had more work in the first 5 months of this year than I had in all 12 of last year. Plus, I'm helping a family member open a new business. And I've been working on some new fiction stories. And I've actually been taking time to exercise rather than staring flabbily at the computer all day.

Maverick Views is not shutting down. Eventually I'll be back to entertain all 3 readers who remain.

Not Drunk, Just Busy

In my last post I wrote about Fiesta, our local 10-day mega-festival here in South Texas. I'm happy to say I've been able to enjoy a few of the ongoing events. But I've been quiet here in blogland due to work, not partying. You see, my employer/client is up in the Mid-Atlantic and has no clue that they're making me labor while my neighbors drink margaritas.

I'll have something interesting to say soon. Check back later.

Blogging a Blogtastic Blogoversary

A few weeks ago, I hit my second blogoversary. And I’ve only quit once during that time. That’s a good record for a person of my predilections.

Most moderate/centrist/middle-of-the-road blogs last a very short time. Blog readers, like cultists, prefer absolutes. Moderates and centrists provide lots of grey. The result is poor readership numbers and too much hate mail from the roving packs of nimwits who demand conformity to their narrow worldviews.

There just aren’t a lot of readers who want analysis outside the left/right chambers of discourse. And those readers who would appreciate such blogs never find them because media accounts of blogs focus solely on the partisan fearmongers whose hubris is matched only by their idiocy.

So most of us here in the center and quasi-center toil in our own little world, referencing one-another, commenting on each other’s blogs and sustaining a community of people who agree on little more than the innate fallibility and potential wisdom of both left and right.

We’re not any more or less prescient or intelligent than our more-partisan brethren. Indeed, we talk out of our asses with the best of them. We can be shallow, crude, stupid and startlingly wrong. But what we don’t do is preach orthodoxy. We have no dominant ideology. No tenants. We each individually have our own worldviews and adhere to them with varying degrees of passion. But, as a group, we suffer no structure more rigid than a mutual tolerance for/mutual disdain of traditional liberal and conservative mindsets.

That makes us outsiders. That results in low readerships. But it ain’t a bad place to call home. I’d rather have 100 readers and preserve my integrity than have 100,000 and be a sycophant.

So on this second blogoversary I make only one promise: I’ll keep writing what I think, regardless of how few even know I’m here.

Psst, Bud, Wanna News Story? Just $3.5 Million.

Ever since I started blogging, I’ve gotten some weird solicitations by email. Most of them are get-quick-rich-with-your-blog schemes. But the one I got yesterday is even more bizarre than usual. Some guy is selling a news story for $3.5 million.

I don’t know what’s stranger, the farcical price of $3.5 million for a news story or that someone thinks bloggers are a reasonable market for million-dollar solicitations. Weird stuff. Had to share.

Happy Returns and New Normals

First, for those of you who don't know, two of the best bloggers have recently come out of hiatus and are back at the keyboard.

Fellow three-namer Richard Lawrence Cohen is back at his eponymous blog and back to sharing his musings on life, his flash fiction and his general mastery of words and imagery.

And the pseudonymed but otherwise in-your-face M. Takhallus is back at Sideways Menken dispensing his signature brand of cutting political and social commentary.

The blogosphere is better for their return.

As for my creeping return to blogging … I have a little story. I was speaking to a friend a few weeks back and I commented that now that my daughter is approaching 3 months in age, I believed my family would get back to normal soon. This friend responded that, after you have a new child, there is no getting back to normal. You can, however, find a new normal.

So, that’s where I am. I’m finding a new normal. But this blog is actually going to be finding an old normal. When I started Maverick Views, my intention was to be more broad in scope than was my first blog, The Yellow Line. But somehow I fell back into the pattern of writing predominately about politics. What this means is that, if there’s nothing that politically interests me, I find no reason to blog. But a blog un-posted on is a blog that’s dying.

Since I’d like Maverick Views to live past one-year, I’m going to be more expansive in my writings. Exactly as I planned from the start. So, look for posts on sports, on religion, on culture, on entertainment, on food … whatever I find interesting. Hopefully you’ll find it interesting as well.

The old normal. Just as good as a new normal.

The Blogosphere Could be in for a Change

The blogosphere has never existed in a time of divided government. In this on-line world’s short history, the Republicans have always controlled Congress and the Presidency. Now things will be different. And how will the blogosphere react?

I’m sure partisanship will be just as strident as ever, but some attitudes will naturally change. Let’s start on the left. The impotent anger so often seen in many blogs now has an outlet. Their party has real power and the bloggers can no longer just criticize. They will have to defend important decisions Democrats make. They will have to explain why certain objectives cannot be reached and why some goals are not important enough for the Democrats to even try to achieve. The answer can no longer be that it’s all the Republican’s fault. Their side will have responsibility for failure too.

Some left bloggers will no doubt take to the changed landscape well. I actually expect Daily Kos to surprise us and become a more sophisticated site. The site leaders learned a lot about politics this last election cycle and they are heavily invested in the Democrats, so I can see the site shifting away from the “Bush lied!” mode of communication and becoming more politically and culturally mainstream.

Other sites will likely be unable to adjust or will simply ignore the Democrats’ success, choosing to continue blaming Bush for every ill. Others I expect will show their true colors, revealing themselves to be not just anti-Republican sites but true radicals who will not be appeased by the Democratic agenda.

All said, I expect the left blogosphere to divide between Democrat partisan sites, true far-left sites and sites where people want to do little more than scream.

On the right, this election should end much of the dripping superiority so often evident in conservative blogs. The Democrats proved they aren’t irrelevant and the right can no longer pretend it has possession of all true and good American ideals. Well, they can still pretend and I imagine a few will, acting like this Democratic Congress is just a bizarre little hiccup in the inevitable 1000-year reign of the right.

However, many other sites will splinter apart as each tries to push the Republican party in their preferred direction—whether that be neocon, theocon, pro-business, anti-immigration or what have you. For the most part, the rightwing blogs have been unified in their defense of the Republican Party. Now, while I still expect partisanship, I also expect more independence. Six years of Republican dominance has suppressed a lot of dissent within the party. Much more of that dissent will now be heard.

As for the center? Well, there aren’t many of us and most of us are small fish. Divided government should suit us well. As long as we don’t start thinking the center is more important or powerful than it really is, we should be fine and, hopefully, more relevant.

I really don’t expect sweeping change in the blogosphere. Nor do I expect immediate change. But I do think this on-line world of ours will be a more diverse and sophisticated place – at least until the 2008 election sends everyone scurrying back to their tribe.

The Lefties Are Going to Have to Make Room for the Centrists

Bull Moose’s triumphalism over the Lieberman win is well worth the read. I’m with the Moose. It does my heart good to see the leftwing blogosphere embarrassed by Ned Lamont’s loss. All they succeeded in doing was making their hated foe Joe Lieberman more independent and potentially more powerful. Now that the Senate looks to be so closely divided, Lieberman will often cast decisive votes.

Good work leftwing. Well done. Nothing demonstrates political wisdom and sanity quite like focusing a great deal of your effort and money on taking down a member of your own party.

But, as annoying as was the Ned Lamont campaign, it probably helped the Democrats. The leftwing was so engaged in that race that they didn’t have the manpower or resources to go out and screw up the chances of other Democrats. Lamont was the pretty shiny object that distracted the lefties just enough to allow the more mature members of the Democratic party to stage an historic victory.

Am I too harsh? Too cruel to the Daily Kos’ of America? Maybe. But I won’t be letting up. The Republicans lost not just because of Iraq or a few scandals but because they abandoned much of the center. They thought they could win by just appealing to a narrow base. They were wrong and I don’t want the Democrats to make the same mistake.

The leftwing deserves a voice in the coalition. They just shouldn’t command total control. Those of us in the middle would be wise to make sure Democrats are hearing our voices too. After all, it was independents, not the liberal base, who swung this election for the Democrats.