BLOGS OF NOTE

recognizing the limitations imposed by labels, which often serve to hijack our critical thinking and substitute convenient and misleading cubbyholes for categorization, it would be fair to think of me as a progressive liberal. that said, on The View this morning one of the guests was senator john mccain's daughter meghan, and i quickly came to both like and respect her as an honest and candid moderate conservative. meghan has recently come under ad hominem fire from the twin svelte attack dogs of the republican party, ann coulter and laura ingraham, for being (in their ruthless view) too overweight to appear in public. it appears that neither coulter nor ingraham had anything substantive to say on the issues mccain has raised at her blog, the daily beast, so they did what all shallow minds do -- go for the jugular with a sniping personal remark. good on ya, meagan, for standing up for yourself and being a strong, thoughtful role model for all young women!!

additionally this morning, john scalzi continued his blog's conversation on racism faced by writers, with another guest entry, this one from k. tempest bradford. i've thought about and discussed and confronted racism for decades, yet i keep discovering fresh revelations (about others and about myself) from articulate and forceful writers like these. bradford's excellent blog is the angry black woman.

and one more, just for fun -- amy alkon's in-your-face relationship advice blog/column, the advice goddess. her hilarious, right-on commentary is informed by a solid grounding in psychology and social research.

i notice that three of the four blogs i've recommended are authored by women. does this reflect a personal bias, i wonder? probably -- my earliest playmates and best friends were girls, the daughters of the farmer my dad worked for. even so, it seems to me that the thoughts and life experience of social/racial minorites are more informative and horizon-broadening than those of many white males, at least in this country. we've ignored or devalued those minority voices for far too long. this ties in with my earlier remarks on xenophobia.

there. put that in your bong and smoke it.