I watched a brilliant one hour documentary last night called Blog Wars: Storyville which explored in detail the place of blogging in the American mid-term elections and politics in general.
Remember the Lieberman vs Lamont primary, when Lamont won on the back of some serious public lobbying by the leftist blogging fraternity, only to be ultimately trumped by Lieberman who then ran as an independent candidate and ended up winning the election. Too funny, can’t say I shed a single tear for the pompous rascist liberal left but I was left amazed by the extent to which the “bloggers” literally controlled and orchestrated the campaign!
In America there is this wonderful notion that involvement and not apathy result in a strong political system and consequently a healthy society. Al Sharpton, a man I don’t always agree with, made a very good point in the documentary when he noted that “A bird needs two strong wings to survive, a strong right wing and strong left wing!”
Clearly South Africa won’t be flying any time soon but we can at least take heart from the abundance of new South African political blogs. Perhaps the opinions of these bloggers will become more widespread as internet access and readership increases throughout the country and hopefully, as a nation, we can become more politically aware as a direct result of the exposure to daily politics provided by these bloggers.
NB: I had a good chuckle after reading this headline on a few of the American political blogs last night: “Barack Hussein Obama: The Feel-Good-About-Yourself Candidate!”. Jokes aside, watch this video to see just how serious Obama will be as a candidate, although I really can’t see someone so inexperienced winning a US presidential election.
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