(12:24 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

More Weblog Triumphalism

or, Adventures in Meta-Meta-Blogging

Last night, under cover of darkness, à Gauche threw a bomb into the quiet café of the blogosphere. There are, he declares, too many, too specialized blogs! And lest you think a personal journal-style blog is less a problem than a blog that keeps track of Pakistan's national cricket team, think again -- you're just specializing in yourself, usually a very narrow topic: "Excelling solely in oneself is hardly better than speaking only of 20th century Continental philosophy." He throws down the gauntlet: "[T]he vast majority of those blogs that can accurately summarize their content in less than five words should probably just stop."

Strong words. Challenging words. I can think of several sites that are probably packing their bags right now: Daily Kos, Spurious, The Volokh Conspiracy, John and Belle Have a Blog (well, maybe not -- the title is six words long), Cliopatria, The University Without Condition ...

One blog that will not be shutting down any time soon, however, is The Weblog, by Adam James Kotsko, Robb "Sugar-Britches" Schunemann, Monica Joan Bennett, Anthony Paul Smith, and Michael Floyd Gabriel Hancock. That is because the sheer diversity of content on this blog would irrevocably boggle the average mind. Long-time readers will remember one of my earliest posts, where I declared that there would be "no token gestures on this site!" (italics in original) and laid out a mission statement:

The Weblog will give me one more venue in which I can write short pieces on a variety of topics, including but not limited to extreme leftist ideology, theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, nanotechnology, constitutional law, sodomy, and the Smashing Pumpkins.

• Recipes
  
• Confessions
  
• Philosophical conceits
  
• Theological conceits
  
• Ruminations
  
• Embarrassing personal disclosures
  
• Apologias
  
• Itineraries
  
• Liturgical reflections and responses thereto
  
• Book reviews
  
• Eulogies
  
• Literary criticism
  
• Album reviews
  
• Discussions of technical computer problems
  
• Lists, lists, and other lists
  
• Abortive attempts to "flood the zone"
  
• Original poetry
  
• Juxtapositions of pop songs and romantic poetry
  
• Meditations on Superman Ice Cream (incidentally, The Weblog is among the top sites in a Google search for that particular genre of ice cream)
  
• "Satire"
  
• So you'd like to... guides

Beyond that, this site has consistently developed innovative blogging technologies. For instance, the three-blog-in-one format currently sported by the University Without Condition was initially developed by me, baby, me. I also installed Trackback on my site before it was cool.

In short, next to The H is O, The Weblog has the strongest claim to godlikeness out of all the blogs in Blogostan, and if those big-name bastards can't figure that out and blogroll me, then that's their loss, damn it! Their loss!
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