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Judge... that reminds me...

I'm supposed to be judging that "ATL Idol" contest. (Part 1. Part 2.) What have I got myself into? What if I hate everything? Somebody will still win, become the new Above the Law blogger, and I'll never get traffic-building links from there again!

Damn, maybe I should be the Paula. But I was going to be the Simon! Why coddle bloggers? If there's anyone that shouldn't be coddled it's a blogger. Nothing more disgusting than a coddled blogger.

That fish smells almost done.

UPDATE: I got my act together and wrote my first comment:

The most important part of blogging is —? to use an American Idol expression ?— song selection. You should be spending much more time looking for good things to blog than actually writing up the post. But you've had your stories imposed on you, and they are stories that don't interest me at all. I clicked on the links, took a look, and couldn't be bothered. And why are they all about black people getting into trouble? Is that supposed to be funny?

But that's not the contestants' responsibility. You got stuck with that. It's like Mariah Carey night. I hate the songs, so how can I care how you sing them? You'd better do something very smart and tricky or I'm gone in a second. This is blogging! You have less than a second to reel me in. One thing I hated about the original articles is that they are complicated and about people I don't know and have no motivation to learn about. Why should I figure out what damned thing happened? So the least you could do is make it very short and funny in some way that didn't require me to understand a lot of crap I don't care about. But you all went long. And putting it in list form or as a series of steps doesn't fool me. It's still long and boring. Blah. I hate everything. You did not amuse me. I would never buy this record.

Some specifics:

Part 1: Exley. That lap dance picture. I was trying to read this sitting in the middle seat on an airplane between two large Harley Davidson bikers from New Zealand. That was an element of entertainment I didn't need. Then, I scrolled down to Alex's post and got a picture of some law books. Yeesh! It's one extreme or the other. And everyone runs with the photo of the smiling black man in happier days. That made me sad. But speaking of things women don't like, Alex, it's not cool to snark "lovers' quarrel" if a man has punched a woman in the stomach. And you've got that right next to a breast-emphasizing photo of the woman. Ugh.

Part 2: Frolic and Detour, only one phrase stood out: "groups of bridesmaids bonding as they make babies' footprints into tiny butterfly wings." Would I read a blog that offered me insight and entertainment in that form? No. You're sneering at ordinary women. Why? Who are you? Sophist falls back on the old device of how-to steps. I never find that funny. Seems like you could program a computer to turn news stories into a list of how-to steps. Here's a phrase: "back-end of the Lee gene pool." 1. Pools don't have a "back-end." You mean "shallow end." 2. Racism alert. Marin ?— my eyes glazed over but I did see the phrase "picked himself up, dusted himself off." That made me want to run off to YouTube and watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Now, that was entertaining, but surely not the effect you want.

Full post as published by Althouse on July 31, 2008 (boomark / email).