I’ve been casually following the rocket-like trajectory of the liberal blogosphere for almost two years and now Chris Bowers has another serious treatment of the phenomenon:

By comparison, right-wing blogs have pretty much only one means of finding a new voice in the blogosphere: when someone starts a new blog. The inability to operate within a community must be the primary reason behind the large number of conservative blogs in the second, third and fourth quintiles of the Blogads traffic rankings. In fact, of these 120 blogs, 77 of them are openly conservative / libertarian. There are swarms of new conservative voices looking to breakout in the right-wing blogosphere, but they are not even allowed to comment, much less post a diary and gain a following, on the high traffic conservative blogs. Instead, without any fanfare, they are forced to start their own blogs. However, because of the top-down nature of right-wing blogs, new conservative blogs remain almost entirely dependent upon the untouchable high traffic blogs for visitors. In short, the anti-community nature of right-wing blogs has resulted in a stagnant aristocracy within the conservative blogosphere that prevents the emergence of new voices and, as a result, new reasons for people to visit conservative blogs.

Unless right-wing blogs decide to open up and allow their readers to have a greater voice, I expect that the liberal and progressive blogosphere will continue its unbroken twenty-month rise in relative traffic. Conservative bloggers continue to act as though they are simply a supplement to the existing pundit class, without any need to converse with those operating outside of a small social bubble or any need to engage people within the new structure of the public sphere. In the formulation of Stirling Newberry, they view themselves existing on top of a pyramid rather than in the middle of a sphere.

This is a much more in-depth analysis than the simple hive vs. herd analogy. Worth reading.

Update, 5:17 p.m.: After thinking this over for almost five whole hours, and reading thoughts from Polipundit and Mark in Mexico, it strikes me that it’s possible that reading blogs might be the intellectual equivalent of going out to protests. (Secretly, I’ve always thought that reading–and writing–blogs was more worthless than that even, but never mind for now.)

It could well be that the liberal temperament is more predisposed to blog-reading than the conservative temperament is in the same way that, for instance, modern American liberalism is more predisposed to protest marches than modern American conservatism is.

The size and number of protest movements, of course, means very little. In the 1990s, there were relatively few mass protest movements, but Bill Clinton was winning elections. Since 2000, there have been many big, impressive protest demonstrations by liberals–yet they’ve been shellacked at the polls.

(Come to think of it, maybe there is a correlation between liberal protesting and conservative electoral success?)

In any case, while it’s certainly possible that the success of the liberal blogosphere is a harbinger of an important growth in liberalism, it’s also possible that it’s a meaningless indicator.

None of which, by the way, invalidates Chris Bowers’s very thoughtful and interesting initial post on the subject.

Just a reminder that The Inside airs on Fox tonight. I wouldn’t have to keep pushing this show on you if the executives at the network would just give it half the promotional support it deserves, but whatever. Just watch the show. I promise, you’ll love it.

And if you’re interested in reading a little backstory on how The Inside found its way to the small screen, read my piece here. It’s a saga worthy of Altman.

My favorite singer-songwriter, Billy Cerveny, has a funny, true observation:

Sitting here working on songs for my new record, I was struck by a thought:

If I were to die today and go to heaven, God would give me a golden guitar and tell me that I get to sit in the corner and write songs for the rest of eternity.

But,

If I were to die today and go to hell, the devil would give me the same golden guitar and tell me that I had to sit in the corner and write songs for the rest of eternity.

P.S. Billy, when’s the new albumn coming out? I’m thirsting for it.

Galley Friend B.W. notes that David Frum has taken the gloves off:

So count me un-fisked – and unimpressed.

And maybe irked enough by Andrew’s continual personalization of this matter to adventure one further point. I began this debate by observing that for all the furious clamor in favor of a legal right to same-sex marriage, once the right was won in Canada, Canadian homosexuals showed scant interest in making use of their new opportunity. Let me in my turn be personal. Andrew mentions in the same column in which he scolds me that he is about to take his annual vacation in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he owns a home and could, I suppose, easily qualify as a legal resident. Andrew has often argued that Massachusetts has recognized same-sex marriage for a year without any immediately catastrophic result. But one could reply that there’s something else that has not happened in this historic year: Andrew Sullivan has never quite gotten around to marrying that boyfriend he so often mentions in his column. Isn’t his own example strong proof that my alleged “sloppiness” was in fact precisely correct?

I’ve not posted much lately because, well, I’m lazy, but also because my computer has grown extremely tired with age, making me crynical and ironic whenever someone mentions the “instantaneous” world of online publishing. But I have written a poem this morning, about life in Washington, which I do humbly offer you now.

I’ve not been to Café Milano
The Georgetown hot-spot
Where all the TV people hang out
The bookers, the producers
The talent.
That’s what they call people in front of a camera,
As if they’re the definition of.

I’ve not sipped Cosmopolitans
With Movers and Shakers.
After work I go home
To feed the kid, and kiss the wife
And—maybe
You’ve noticed, or at least you suspect—
I do believe this makes me better than you.

Tucker Carlson’s new MSNBC show, The Situation, premiered last night to very kind reviews.

In other news, it’s now official: Jon Klein has been worse for CNN than AOL was.

Galley Brother B.J. points out that someone has finally created a real-life T.G.I. McScratchy’s. Scroll down the page for SynCity and you’ll find:

Saturdays: New Year’s Eve in SynCity with a champagne toast and balloon drop.

New Year’s Eve every Saturday night? That must be the greatest place in the world to work!

You may have grown tired of the Kaus-Sullivan fight, but I haven’t. Kaus’s latest blow is pretty rough.