Sunday, August 13, 2006
Avedon appreciation day
Avedon Carol of The Sideshow has led a very short honor roll of English-language bloggers who have recognized the importance of developments in Mexico. Aside from her, there's Machete, CorrenteWire, Booman, AllSpinZone, Good Nonsense.
Oh, and The (usually-much-smarter) Agonist, which thinks that the PAN candidate's name is Cardenas, a mistake on par with imagining a GOP presidential nominee named Kennedy or Roosevelt.
Kos, Atrios, Digby, FiredogLake, Calpundit, Alterman... all the cool heavies have barely registered the existence of Mexico, much less its current slide toward crisis. Instead, they seem to have been focused on what are almost pseudo-stories: "World War IV," a terror plot where no details to make the threat plausible have yet emerged, and The Tragic Hacking of Joe Lieberman's Web Site. It's not that these stories are irrelevant, but how important are they, really? They have been fed to us by the same media that lied us into Iraq, perhaps for the same reason. At least as they are presented, they are spectacle, not news.
All of which makes me appreciate Avedon and The Sideshow all the more. The Sideshow is a delicious mix of art, nature photos, video, music, science fiction, and politics, not to mention the ever-popular Bra of the Week. (If only I had broadband, to enjoy the music and vid). The Mexico story, as is appropriate, is a minor element of The Sideshow. But, as is appropriate for a country that is a major petroleum exporter, a major trade partner of the US, and the likely source of millions of refugees if things blow up, it is an element.
So, here's to Avedon and to one of the best blogs on the web, The Sideshow. Que viva!
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