Blog blog

This blog has hit the big time — Shane Richmond at Britain’s Telegraph newspaper mentions me in his blog-roundup column with regards to my Katrina piece (“a great blogger, by the way” — now there’s a money quote).

(And here I thought my numbers had doubled because of the penny-stacking link.)

Anyway, it’s always nice to have a professional journalist point to my work, and not being familiar with the Telegraph, I looked it up online. Wikipedia refers to it as a conservative newspaper, and, given the tenor of my thoughts on Katrina, it surprises me that I caught the interest of one of its columnists.  Now why would a conservative newspaper want to direct their readers to my blog, given the “strong words” I have for the Bush administration? 

I don’t know what it means exactly, but I like to think that, perhaps, “conservative” in the UK means, you know, actually conservative in one’s political views, which is the opposite of what it means in the US.  “Conservative” in the US means “espousing a conservative viewpoint while actually doing the exact opposite,” like declaring that the government needs to be smaller while making the government substantially larger, or decrying “tax and spend liberals” while wiping out a decade of economic growth and plunging the country into a debt that will take generations to pay back, or advocating “morality” and “family values” while looting the treasury, taking bribes from lobbyists, doling out patronage in the billions, preying on teenage boys and playing footsie in airport men’s rooms.  A conservative politician I can respect — what I can’t abide is a Republican politician.

(For the record, Mr. Richmond seems interested in the piece primarily for my confession that I get my news from blogs — which makes the tip o’ that hat even more intriguing — coming from a newspaper and all.)

(Wait a minute — Shane Richmond isn’t

, is he?)

UPDATE: It occurs to me that, in addition to being a nice mention, Mr. Richmond’s nod contains not a single untruth, distortion, misrepresentation or mean-spirited smear against me –making it unique among my experiences in print media.  A columnist in a “conservative” newspaper in the US would not be able to mention my Katrina piece without first characterizing me as “far-left blogger Todd Alcott” or “tinfoil-hat-wearing leftist blogger Todd Alcott” or even the milder “One-hit Hollywood hack screenwriter Todd Alcott.”  So the Telegraph is okay by me.