Why Don't More Guys Blog?

They do, of course. There are plenty of male bloggers out there. But I know very few of them personally... But my wife blogs, and practically every single one of her female friends blogs. Its a strange thing, I guess. Maybe for the best?

At any rate, I'm really curious about what people think about the fact that Barack Obama chose Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugoration.

It's funny. The people I spend by far most of my time with (other than my own family) are my colleagues at work, and we literally have been told to avoid political talk in the work place (although it does come up from time to time, but only in the nicest kind of ways). Typically, we touch on politics gently, although occasionally we have had some pretty spirited debates on this bailout for example. Its very interesting because the people on my immediate team span the globe, there's a couple from China, one from India, another from Romania, another from Malaysia... Very interesting mix, and a more interesting perspective.

The people I associate with the second most amount of time with (again other than my immediate family) is the folks from my church, and again, politics is a subject I should tread quite a bit more carefully with these folks than I do, and usually I do. Its hard to nurture each other spiritually, when you get into it with each other politically I suppose. To the degree I do, I guess, I'm not as effective as I should be in my church community.

But politics has always been my first love, so I'm stuck having these fake blogging debates with very famous bloggers like Andrew Sullivan. I read one of his posts, either get a bit excited or a little fired up, and get inspired to write a post of my own in response.

Its a little one-sided, though, I along with thousands? millions? of people are reading his blog, but he has not shown the common decency to read mine. I've even sent him a couple of e-mails (he is gay, conservative, extremely pro-Obama, and lately has been a little nasty toward my church), but sadly no response, no mention of it on his blog.

Also, its a little unfair. My blogging habit is a hobby, his is a profession. Mine is a distraction, his is a career. And of course, he is about a million times better writer than I am and would obliterate me if he actually did decide to engage me in a little debate, so maybe its for the best.

At any rate, I'm a little guy without a blogging community to call my own.

On that note, here's what Sullivan thinks about the Warren pick: here, here, here, here, here, ok a lot.

It's an interesting move by Obama, mainly because of how controversial its been for so many people looking to carry the cultural war into Obama's administration. In case you don't know Rick Warren was a strong advocate for proposition 8 (Sullivan has said clearly that prop 8 was mean-spirited, bigoted, and wrong), encouraging his church members to vote for it. He's also strongly pro-life, anti-stem cell, of course anti-gay marriage. But he's written books like "The Purpose Driven Life" that have sold millions of copies, has de-emphasized some of these cultural issues and instead has focused time and energy on poverty issues, Aids in Africa, and global warming.

Read his wikipedia entry here. So, Warren is much more than a figure to be tolerated, he's a potential asset for the Obama administration, and Obama would be foolish to marginalize himand his community.

By the way, I really, really, really have a goal to transform my blog as follows:

As is obvious to you by now, I have completely abandoned my essays... I want to get back to it at some point. I have this dream about customizing a website where I can do a little bit of both. A section for blogging, then pulling from those blogs, as I have time, ideas to feed into more thorough essays on interesting (to me) topics which will be presented in a different section.

I'm hoping to have time to do so over the Christmas holidays. Wishful thinking? Most definitely... As it stands, i have a whole mess of disposable and by now dated blog posts that are burying some of my essays I wrote earlier. Not a travesty. They mean much more to me than to any of you, but still, I would like them to be a bit more available than they currently are.

Anyway, in case if I don't blog again (and I really, really need to tone it down a bit), I hope your holidays are happy and controversy free (but if I do see you in person this holiday season, maybe we can talk a little politics. Maybe indulge me in a little Rick Warren discussion if you don't mind)...