Ellen Goodman's Opinion Piece Titled "E-Male"

Ellen Goodman writes:

. . . Last week, these progressive political bloggers not only attracted 1,200 to Chicago for the Yearly Kos convention, but made it a designated stop for seven out of the eight Democratic candidates.

Nevertheless, there is another, less flattering way in which broadband has followed broadcast and the liberal political bloggers mimic the conservative talk-show hosts. The chief messengers are overwhelmingly men -- white men, even angry white men. . . .

So I wrote her an e-mail:

I have to take issue with your opinion piece today. I was at "Yearly Kos" and I'm a middle-aged female. We were males and females, white and everything else you could imagine (including a very strong Pacific Islander caucus), lean and fat, tall and short, some in wheel chairs, some young and some very elderly but mostly frequently with some degree of grey hair, lots of couples (one couple I met was from American Samoa), Birkinstocks and 4" platform wedgies, blacks and hispanics: a true cross section. Kos is a Hispanic male and Digby even though she has a man's photo on her site is a female. We mourned the death of Steve Gilliard, a wonderful black man. Often you can't tell from our handles or web sites what niche we fall into -- often we do that on purpose. You are right, many of us get vicious hate male and maybe women are more sensitive to it than men but that hasn't kept us quiet or off the blogs. At Yearly Kos some of the panels that were standing-room-only were panels with majority women but not specifically on a "woman's issue" like "Live Blogging the Libby Trial".

Come join us! I think you'll find yourself feeling right at home. We love good articulate writers (but we are sticklers for accuracy).

Seajane