I just read a fabulous piece by Steve Gilliard about the social change behind blogs. His focus is more on commerce, but stay with me on this:

The problem with dotcom content was that it was designed to appease large advertisers. They simply needed the income, so they wanted to give the impression of hip, but not too hip and cool, but not too cool. But the problem was that the content sucked.... People saw it and were not impressed.

I read this and apply it to the social and political realm. When it comes to political discussion are we truly trapped by the context of the status quo? Perhaps the real paradigm to focus on is not Left vs. Right (though there certainly can be some bleedthrough), but Connected vs. Disenfranchised. We have some natural allies out there, if only we can get past this Red vs. Blue stuff the corporate media is feeding us.

Consider:

[T]he reason blogs rose up so quickly is that they provided the alternative to what was out there. Instead of lefty "jorunalism" there was lefty opinion not tainted by the hothouse of the Nation or the windbags of Pacifica, people who couldn't organize a lunch date, much less anything political. Pacifica's problem was the problems of all insular groups, their internal politics became more important than the external politics. Kos and Atrios, especially created a middle left, one which wasn't tied to the Clintonite past or the ANSWER/Pacifica crowd and didn't embrace every anti-American movement as authentic. They have created a rational, sound left which represents how most people feel.

But this happened because they weren't looking to make money. Blogs beat the dotcoms because they were driven by passion and interest, not going public and becoming millionaires. Blogs were fast, current, speedy and vital. They weren't planned and reflective. The people behind them didn't take their personalities out of the mix. They became part of the attraction. They didn't hide their personal lives, they integrated them into the site. In short, blogs were about people with opinions, not opinions alone.

[Emphasis mine.]

What's really interesting, Gilliard points out, is that blogs are thriving on the political right, too. And not all of them are chuckleheads. In other words, everyone is starting to wonder just what the heck is going on with this country.

Consider: We have some natural allies on the right -- fiscal conservatives and libertarians -- who also are outraged at the hubris with which this administration, and the Republican Party along with it, has stripped away many civil rights, brazenly embarked on worldwide empire building, validated a bunch of Islamic gangbangers by marking them not as the criminals they are but as enemies, launched a war to grab oil and establish a permanent military presence in the Middle East -- all the while recklessly running up the deficit to hights never imagined, spending money like there's no tomorrow, chasing their tails on national security, running the dollar into the ground (to the point that the Economist is publishing articles of strong concern), while attacking the value of privacy as being anti-American and immoral.

And we're all realizing that the corporate media ain't telling the whole truth. We're collectively realizing just how out of power we are, for a citizenry that presumably retains all rights except those specifically granted to government.

There are strong differences, to be sure. A woman's right to choose is a big one. But there is common ground there, in terms of creating policies and laws that work to reduce unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Gay marriage is another. But aside from homophobia, there also are strong sentiments that no group or demographic should systematically be denied rights enjoyed by all Americans. The impending deconstruction of Social Security is a biggie. But something has to be done there, too. Whether they gut it or it's left alone, it's pretty likely I won't be seeing any checks.

And so on. We're people with problems. We have our differences, but I submit there's more that unites us than unites them with the ruling class hegemony.

The media plays up Red vs. Blue, and stirs up the passions to partisan fervor. Thanks to the corporate media, we don't have political discourse -- we have political football matches, with fans cheering blindly for their team.

But we're outside of that, or moreso, anyway. We aren't restricted by the "news fit to print" or what Rupert Murdoch thinks is reality. We can get past the cheerleading and human waves and beer brawls. But it will take work, and focus. It will take reaching out to people who disagree with us on some hot button issues made all the hotter by the corporate media.

We should remember that the corporate media is defending the status quo. They want to make money. They want to grow. And they've bought the political protection to do it. And they are the ones telling us what's happening and what it all means.

The recent Pew Internet and American Life Study (pdf) notes:

• 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people.
• 27% of internet users say they read blogs, a 58% jump from the 17% who told us they were blog readers in February. This means that by the end of 2004 32 million
  Americans were blog readers. Much of the attention to blogs focused on those that covered the recent political campaign and the media. And at least some of the overall growth in blog readership is attributable to political blogs. Some 9% of internet users said they read political blogs “frequently� or “sometimes� during the campaign.
• 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online. This is a first-time measurement from our surveys and is an indicator that this application is gaining an impressive foothold.
• The interactive features of many blogs are also catching on: 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs.
• At the same time, for all the excitement about blogs and the media coverage of them, blogs have not yet become recognized by a majority of internet users. Only 38% of all internet users know what a blog is. The rest are not sure what the term “blogâ€? means.

--and yet--

Just under one-in-ten internet users (9%) said they regularly or sometimes read political blogs during the campaign such as the Daily Kos or TalkingPoints Memo or Instapundit: 4% said they did so regularly and 5% said they did so sometimes. Those who were heavily involved with the campaign online by getting news and information, using email to exchange arguments and mobilize others, and connecting to campaign events, were more likely than others to read political blogs. It was also relatively popular with younger internet users and with broadband users.

All this in a year when blogs were deemed so new that "blog" is Word of the Year. Can we reasonably expect those trends to improve in the future? I believe so.

When I look at where we are now, the words of Howard Beale in Network 28 years ago resonate:

We know the air is unfit to breathe, our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don't go out anymore. We sit in a house as slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster, and TV, and my steel belted radials and I won't say anything."

Well I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crying in the streets. All I know is first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm a human being! God Dammit, my life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I want you to get up right now. Get up. Go to your windows, open your windows, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Things have got to change my friends. You've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open your window, stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

What does this have to do with blogs? Going back to Gilliard:

People read a blog either because it challenges them or says things they agree with. They don't read it because it mimics the local paper. Or because it's cool. Blogs are the opposite of cool. They're involved, concerned, thoughtful. Even Wonkette, who pretends to be a drunken gossip, cares. The stories she runs are not random and not just about what is hip. If anything, blogs are the anti-hip. They aren't about detached irony. Because that is what drives Viacom. The hip, the cool, the new. The Daily Show is a hit because it is done by people who cares what happens, a Viacom exception. And this isn't a virtue of lefty blogs either. The right also cares what happens. In this, no one is too cool for the room.

No one cared about dotcoms, it was all about money in the end. It was a mercenary mentality and got mercenary result. Blogs are a rejection of that and about the work of people who care and who think ideas matter. That it isn't just about who gets rich first.

If there is any success to blogs, it is because it has made the content on the computer human.

In other words, we on the left can join some voices on the right, here in the blogosphere, and shout: "I'm a human being. God Dammit, my life has value."

Can we doubt the power of that? Do we dare?