OK, I attended the LA blog panel last night, and also didn’t go to Heather’s and get smashed. My excuse for not writing anything about it sooner is the same excuse that I had to not get blotto at Chateau Havrilesky–I’m nursing a recuperating Patricia, who’s recovering from some minor surgery. I felt a little guilty about going at all, but in her loving way (of which I am always undeserving) she insisted, so we rented her some movies (it’s amazing how much more quickly movies can be selected when they’re being selected for just one person…), I made dinner for her, and took off for the event. I left later than I wanted, and LA traffic was typical Saturday night–there was no way to get there quickly, so I missed the first twenty minutes or so.

Luke Ford, who was on the panel (sorry, no permalink), has a good rundown of the highlights. It was a rollicking good discussion, and seemed more focused on the dynamics and politics of blogging, rather than last week’s event in Chinatown, which seemed to be more about technology. I didn’t attend that one, partly because it looked a little too hip to me, and anyone who knows me knows that I’m the lord of unhip.

That is to say, I’m not down with it. I’m not even with it.

I don’t even care what “it” is. I’m just not a hep cat.

From what I heard, my impression was correct, and I’ve no regrets in not attending, since it would have meant leaving Patricia alone two Saturday nights in a row. I was quite pleased to attend this one, though. Cathy Seipp did a great job moderating, and because the audience was small, and smart, it wasn’t just a panel discussion–it was a seminar, with a lot of good, civilized give and take from the floor.

What I’d like to focus on are a couple of issues that came up in the discussion.

The first is that there seemed to me an inordinate amount of discussion about the political leanings of the blogosphere, or at least that portion that seems to get the most attention, some of which was on the panel. It was another display of the sterility and uselessness of political labels like “right-wing” and “conservative” and “liberal.” Of the people on the panel, I doubt if any of them would self identify as either “right-wing” or “conservative.” (Though it was pointed out that we did have one religious conservative on the panel–Luke Ford, who’s an unorthodox orthodox Jew, complete with yarmulke, who also writes a lot about sex and porn…) Like Glenn, I’m always surprised to be called either of those things.

My political views are always evolving somewhat, but if I have to be labeled, I consider myself a child of the Enlightenment (not the French-style one, with the guillotines and all), but a classical nineteenth-century liberal. But I don’t think that there’s any one label that can encompass any person who thinks broadly and cogently about issues, and to attempt to apply one is self defeating and pointless.

But many people, including many journalists, have trouble describing someone that they can’t put into a box, so they come up with various litmus tests that allow them to categorize folks. Example: pro removing Saddam, with or without yet another UNSC resolution=”right wing.” Another example: no problem with human cloning=”left-wing or liberal.” Yet another example: Not understanding that the president is a retarded monkey (disregarding the facts that he graduated from Harvard with an MBA, and seems to outwit apparently much smarter non-simians at every political turn)=”right wing extremist.”

Of course, one then has to be careful not to use too many different kinds of test strips, or one gets conflicting results.

I suspect that this is what happens when many people read weblogs. They read it until they see something that produces a bright color change in the pH paper, and at that point they consider the test completed, and blogger categorized. If you consider yourself a liberal Democrat, right now one of your strongest litmus tests might be the war, or even more specifically, an insufficient amount of antipathy to the war, and specifically to this “unelected Administration.” So it’s not surprising that many place “warbloggers” (with whom, on many other issues they might find themselves in agreement) in the camp of the “right.” But I think that this is more of a perception, focused through imperfect prisms of thought, than any reality.

This morning, Dennis “the Menace” Kucinich was on Meet the Press. Russert challenged him to back up his statement that “it’s about oooiiiiilllll!!”

He trotted out the usual (circumstantial only) argument, such as it is: Iraq has oil; the Bush people are oil men; they’ve offered no other reason: therefore it must be oil.

Never mind that Venezuela has oil, Saudi Arabia has oil, Iraq’s oil could be gained without sending hundreds of thousands of troops to the region and risking the lives of military men and women by simply doing a deal with Saddam.

Never mind the fact that the President has been making a case, and that perhaps Congressman Kucinich is simply too dim to comprehend it, or he doesn’t believe it, but to say that the President’s offered no other reasons is simply untrue.

The argument is simply hogwash. Is to say that to be a right winger?

I don’t think that blogging, or success in blogging, is about ideology. It’s about clear thinking, and argumentation based on facts as best they can be ascertained. I don’t know, perhaps, right now, that looks “right wing,” for whatever reason. I still have to go with a much simpler, yet more accurate formulation; in Charles Johnson‘s words, it’s simply anti-idiotarian.

The other issue that came up was as a result of a question by Susannah Breslin to Luke Ford–to wit, since she thought that one of the best things about Luke’s blog was his errrmmm…wide range of content, not all of it family rated: was he concerned about censorship in general, and did he feel that he had to self censor?

Fortunately, Eugene Volokh fielded this admirably, because I found the question almost meaningless as stated. Censorship, like “hate,” and “racism,” has become a dramatically overused word, to the point that it’s losing almost any useful meaning. When a woman who wants to be paid by the taxpayer to smear chocolate on her body loses her NEA grant, she cries censorship, and many agree with her, when of course it’s nothing of the kind.

“Self censorship” is either an oxymoron, or a tautology, or perhaps paradoxically, both. Every writer engages in “self censorship.” Every word I write–even every word that is going into this post, even how to spell it, if you’re an avant-gard poet, is a choice. But the word for it is not really “self censorship.” It’s called editing, and judgement.

I suspect that what Susannah meant was, “do you ever not write something you’d otherwise like to because you fear some kind of repercussions from it?”

And of course, the answer is, of course. All the time.

I also don’t go out to the grocery in my bathrobe, though it might be much more convenient, out of similar fears.

But again, that’s simply judgement. Every action may carry consequences. I might write something that makes people angry, and not want to read my weblog any more. Or perhaps it will reduce their faith in my knowledge, so that they’ll be less likely to take, for example, my space policy advice. I have to judge (and censor, if you insist on using that inappropriate word) whether the words that I’m using, and ideas I’m expressing, are best accomplishing my objectives for that particular post, and for my weblog in general.

Similarly, when I write a column for Fox News, or Tech Central Station, I’m more careful in my word choice and tone than I am on the weblog, because I know that’s what those publications expect, and if I submit (at least consistently) material that they feel inappropriate, or of no interest to their readers, I won’t be writing for them any more. And once in a while (and fortunately, not very often, so I guess I have good judgement), I guess wrong, and submit something that they do decide to change. But that’s not censorship–again, it’s called “editing,” and that’s their job, and I never resent it or consider them censors.

Censorship has a very precise meaning–the prevention, by a government, of a point of view or piece of information being published. Beyond that, everyone has full freedom to publish whatever they want on their blog, and to submit anything they want to other publications. The flip side of that freedom is the necessity to accept the consequences, whether they be loss of readership, rejection of material, or even, in extreme cases, libel suits.

Are these legitimate concerns? Of course. Are they concerns about censorship? Absolutely not. Let us maintain the integrity of the meanings of words; when we lose them, we lose the ability to discuss things intelligently and rationally.

[Update at 8:30 PM PST]

Steven Den Beste has some further thoughts (though probably independently of mine) on the absurdity of boxes for bloggers.