Backwards Valentine

Jeff Jarvis writes a good piece about people pressing him to blog about DanRatherGate. People have been bugging me too -- Republican people -- and I find the notion pretty amusing -- that there is now an expectation that we should, as bloggers, do everyone's bidding?! And somehow or another, despite them knowing we are partisan, we are now expected to be constructing some magnanimous equalitarian forum here at our personal blogs. Sorry folks. I told them what Jeff did -- feel free to go blog yourselves. I like what Jarvis says here:

Admit the irony: We get sick of Big Media telling us what we should read. But here commenters try to tell us what to write.

It's not media. It's a blog. It's personal. I'll write about what I want to write about (or not). You don't like it? Then go blog.

Also, if someone wants me to write about Bush's military service -- that's a real story -- but writing about what CBS did or didn't do with those memos -- especially before all the real dirt has come to light, is just a way to obfuscate what matters -- Bush's military service.

And I especially like Jarvis' term, backwards valentine:

This is an odd reaction to blogs. In the long run, I think it's a compliment, a backwards valentine: Somebody wants to know what you say about something or expects you to have an opinion -- even and often one with which they'll disagree -- and so they can't believe it when you don't; you disappoint. Nonetheless, a blog is still personal; it's what a blogger wants to write when he or she wants to (or has the time to) write it.