Well, speaking in my questionable capacity as an acutely non-rich blogger who is not technically a Gotham neighbor and is stuck with a Y chromosome but is still both white and liberal nonetheless... what you guys do with the CK/DG/Liza blog empire doesn't make me squirm. You make me proud.

A significant portion of my resume involves being a professional online community developer and manager. That doesn't directly apply to my prog-blogging activities, either here on CK where I am only a tiny little part of the gestalt or in other venues where I play a more prominent role, but it does inform my awareness of what the group dynamics are in such arenas.

In other words, I know quality when I step in it. And I know what a royal bitch it is to try to herd cantankerous cats and to wrangle passionate people from all walks of life who in many cases disagree on stuff they care a lot about. It's a tough job, and not everybody has to (or wants to, or can) do it. Imho, y'all do a pretty good job of channeling excess angst into effective energy in your corner of the blogoscape. Make of that what you will.

This is not to say that I am a blanket CK sycophant, mind you. (For one thing, I come down firmly in the camp of those who say that there is way too much frickin' red in the site's graphic design *ahem*). But I consider this particular online venue to be as important as it is intense and idiosyncratic in terms of what it brings to the partisan parts of the body blogitic. So as long as we're all cool with that, I'll keep coming by here and dragging the odd bit of internets traffic along with me.

Enough with the bloviating. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled rant, which is already in progress.

"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it." -- Molly Ivins, 1944-2007