Joe, i like you and i like a lot of what you say. but as a Senior Fellow, I'm going to give you this warning. morning teevee show posts aren't worthy for Corrente's front page. find something truly important and interesting to talk about, or i'll start demoting your posts.

teevee sux. that's established fact. we're more sophisticated around here; you can find other things to blog about rather than "tweety is a republican ho." we all know that. and in case you can't tell, i hate teevee and i believe giving it attention is wrong, evil and a waste of our time.

I get overwhelmed with passion at times.
Perhaps if there were a paragraph or two on the front page telling newbies like me what you do, who you are..and who you are not..that might be helpful. I am sorry if I offended..I don't believe in abusing the hospitality of places I am invited into. I thought my blog was just that..my blog.
this is not my blog..it is your blog. I am more than willing to follow the rules.
Joebasic

Some would argue that passion is most effective when controlled. Like any culture, this little culture has to be learned. Your blog is your blog, but your blog is also one room of The Mighty Corrente Building. So, keep the hallways clean, polish the brass nameplate on your door, be convivial at the wet bar, and so forth.

Nobody exists in isolation; that is true here as well. "My" is always, in some way "ours," and vice versa, too.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

JoeBasic:

For technical reasons (and this may change when I get the upgrade in place) I cannot give you the administrative superpowers to front-page and de-front-page your posts without giving you other superpowers that neither of us would want you to have.

Now, I can arrange for no posts to be front paged, but that would involve somebody regularly front-paging what ought to be front-paged, and I don't think anybody wants to put in the time to do that, and I'm happy with the idea that anybody who puts in sufficient effort ought to be front paged in any case.

So, the remedies for you to practice, practice, practice might be: (1) to stick to comments for short pieces (and they will get read, I promise you), and/or (2) to post longer, more analytical pieces (see VL's comment above on writing), and/or (3) to watch the wire services and just post interesting and unique but useful stuff (formula: Headline, source, money quote, snark or joke. The morning tv post didn't make it because we've all got five years of heavy duty media critique behind us). All of us arrived at our present eminence (snort) along one of those routes.

Yes, spelling and punctuation count. The Olympics give points for style. So do we. This is a blog, not a discussion board. In any case, spelling and punctuation are useful tools. The absence of errors can confer a level of authority.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

"The absence of errors can confer a level of authority."
Or one could infer just an absence of errors.

if not actually differentiating us from the random hubbub of the internetz, Recluse. (Yeah, I spelled it that way on purpose, 'cause I don't like the "tubes" image).

we're not martinets -- but we do have some standards, mmkay?

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

"The absence of errors can confer a level of authority."
"Or an absence of sloppiness can be seen as professionalism."
True and true again. Yes, thank you, Sarah. Silly me. I should've learned by now not to just jump in to a blog's comments! How rash! How verbal! How not reclusive! An apparently too cryptic or too stupid comment inviting conversation, or just a hello. Won't happen again. I can learn, maybe. Confer authority, infer something else. Reading words. Talking words, typing words, thinking words, sometimes I speak them.
Sorry, sorry. mmkay?
Take care, Jan