Blogger crack, I tell ya

My friend Joe first turned me onto The Huffington Post, which was bad enough. As Joe describes it in his blog, it's as if Salon and Slate got high and did a three-way with Drudge, and the kid turns out to vote Democrat and lives off a multi-million dollar trust fund. Joe is pretty conservative and I'm a bit more liberal on some issues, but I have to agree that the bloggers are addictive. Reading blog entries from such varied celebs as Quincy Jones, Bill Maher and Ellen DeGeneres are weird enough. But even more interesting are the perspectives on subjects I care about, all in one place instead of slingshot across the internet. Like Cable Neuhaus standing up for Aaron Brown (who I do like and who I don't think that CNN should ditch, although I don't think he should have a 9 pm time slot. And Joshua Zeitz's interesting piece about a "racialist" magazine with an editor who has allegedly gotten a lot of praise from some prominent right-wingers. As well as David Sirota's post about media reactions to a previous comment about network coverage of Iraq. It's interesting to see how fluid this all is, and how the bloggers seem to respond to it.

However, even funnier yet may be a new parody site that's now sprung up - Huffington's Toast. Part of it is the Al Franken, "Woe is me, Bush is in power and he's eeeevil" parody (note: I adore Franken.) But for anyone who was at BlogNashville, you'll get a kick outta the Glenn Reynolds/Dave Winer parody, even if no one else does.