Riffing Off Dumbledore/Open Post

[UPDATE: See The Real Ugly American's take on Open Trackbacks. Good post. Meat on those bones, bubba. AND due to blogger error (mine, I think, not Blogger's :-), somehow a trackpack ping to Committees of Correspondence was "etherized". DO READ: it's a big deal. In "When I was Ten Years Old" he links to a story you really ought to hear.] My Wonder Woman's a children's librarian, so for our anniversary, we caught "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." I had to wait until the end of the flick for something besides the typical "Harry Heroics" and boffo special effects. That was when Dumbledore spoke to Harry of a time approaching when everyone they knew would be called upon to choose between doing what's right... or what's easy. And then, following the tracks of one linkfest to another to another late last night,—just kinda casually cruisin' n perusin'—until I lost track of the links in the chain, and I ended up at Alexandra von Maltzan's All Things Beautiful. There, I found a post to end my evening with: "Loyalty To The Truth on Thanksgiving." She refers to Hugh Hewitt's article on how to have a political argument with family (just read it) and then builds a powerful "tribute" to genuine bloggers she knows. From her leadoff: "The loyalty and integrity we should have as bloggers is to the Truth and liberation of that Truth, and not to the Truth we assign to the political denominations we belong to. And above all to the good old fashioned family values of integrity and loyalty to that Truth which we celebrate at Thanksgiving. Respect for each other as bloggers no matter what we believe in is paramount, and no amount of self gratifying echo chamber rhetoric should come in the way of a good upbringing, and manners, above all being grateful today that we have a voice." And you know, the truth she's talking about applies whether it's bloggers who are devoted to so-called "important" issues or to personal journaling—or even to food and recipes ("Do YOU credit the sources of your recipes every time, David? Well, do you?") It's a post I believe well worth reading in its entirety. In fact, I archived the text just in case her permalink should ever prove less than permanent, so I can return to that one statement from time to time. The quote the other day from Jo's Cafe? It's worth repeating in this context: "What is most important is who you are and does your blog reflect you... " There are the hard choices... and the easy ones. When we're blogging, the hard choices sometimes demand introspection... just to know they really are there. "Where is my bias? What do I believe and why?" If we ever allow our biases or our egos to persuade us to shade the truth, to twist it or even to outright lie, then we become the little people who populate the boob tube opinion programs calling themselves "news". Just a thought. Read the two posts linked above for better presentations. In a strangely related post dealing metaphorically with blog ethics, The Crazy Rants of Samatha Burns reports, Source Code Stolen From NZ Bear. heh Indeed. Consider this my Friday "Open all weekend" Open Post with The Open Trackback Alliance Link to this URL: http://thirdworldcounty.blogspot.com/2005/11/riffing-off-dumbledore.html Trackback to this URI: http://www.haloscan.com/tb/mnmus/113293642547681487/ See Ferdy's Open Trackbacks Pingposters List here. I'll try to do a frontpage post rounding up interesting pings posted here, later. PingLinked at: NIF, Is It Just Me?, The Blue State Conservatives(apparently not: MT seems to be having trouble accepting trackback pings--but go to BSC and read up, anyway, 'K?), Conservative Cat, Don Surber After Hours, Right Wing Nation, Stray Dog, Blogin Outloud, TMH's Bacon Bits