it's a tricky issue, ceebs.
i think part of it is cause by the fact that the opinions shared by the majority of ET'ers are painfully under-represented in the tradmed, and we come here already galled by this.
so when someone new doesn't immediately signal comity, indeed appears to be equivocal, ambiguous or even hostile to the values we seem to agree on mostly here, then there's a reaction of....shit, we come here to get away from all this crap, here it is right in our own cyber-front room, aaaargh...
having said that, there have been some more um, traditional thinkers, like winstonchurchill, fr'instance, who brought a serious and thought-through set of opinions to the table and was treated very well, i thought.
obviously humouring someone who 'thinks different' than most of us, just to keep them around so we have a more 'balanced' blog would be absurd, but there is a tiny bit of how shall i say....'we're a little club who've earned the right to our in-jokes, and you get to wait and work (link) hard like good little newbies, flow with us and you can fold into the group too'. i can't point to any comments in particular, but there was a slightly self-satisfied vibe sometimes, i feel.
could be completely out to lunch on this, i dunno, if it's there it's tiny and barely worth worrying about.
nothing that weird, considering the daily insanity we're daily exposed to in that 'other' world, you know, the one when one isn't refreshing recent comments like the mouse had a mind of its own.
here we pore over politics and parse the straight press, but we're always going to be a microcosm of that other world, we're umbilically connected to it, so we'll get all the seven deadlies and more dropping in.
ET has changed, become a little less personal and yet has more intelligent voices than before, making it more universal, a Good Thing, i reckon, worth the loss of the cozier feeling when there were fewer of us.
there are scads of great lefty blogs, we all 'formally occurred' here and chose to make it home(page), all for different, but probably similar reasons, a jam of spontaneous expression, that blends seriousness with hilarity in unexpected ways.
like a big soup we all throw ingredients into, and then chow down happily.
oy! who are you? what's that you just tossed in our bowl? lol ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
obviously humouring someone who 'thinks different' than most of us, just to keep them around so we have a more 'balanced' blog would be absurd,
depends what you mean by humouring them. If they're prepared to keep coming back and put up with our biases, I think it can actually only be good for us. Arguing against the tradmed is much like beating your head against a brick wall, we're just going to end up outraged that its still there tomorrow. if its absurd that we'd be more balanced, fair enough, do we all want it to be that much more balanced? Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
as for your comment about a balanced blog, i agree. we don't want to just preach to the choir.
or preach at all, lol.
balance is so relative, perhaps the banter and light-heartedness that balances out the wonk factor for the likes o' me, could contribute to the problem of 'bottling' essence de ET for 'serious' players. (like the ones xavier alludes to).
i don't buy in (!) to a conflict between boxers and wrestlers here, i experience it more as sweet'n'sour, soft + hard, yin/yang...
a balsamic vinegar of blogs! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
