Every cloud has a silver lining. I’m sure that Will Vehrs wishes the whole Martinsville blog controversy would go away, and he may well wish that his friends would stop defending him and let the whole matter drop. But, as one of Virginia’s earliest political bloggers and a zealous blogging advocate, Will can take some degree of comfort in the publicity his case is generating for Virginia’s blogosphere. Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Ray McAllister used the kerfuffle as the occasion to highlight Virginia’s political blogs.
McAllister sums up much of the blogosphere by citing the cartoon in The New Yorker in which two dogs are talking. “‘I had my own blog for a while,’ one says. ‘But I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking.'” But he concedes that some are worth reading, from One Man’s Trash to Raising Kaine, from Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball to Not Larry Sabato.
And if anyone should doubt the influence of Virginia’s blogs on the Mainstream Media, check out the lead editorial in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch. The T-D picked up on the hypocrisy of Del. Ward Armstrong, D-Henry, in calling for Vehr’s resignation — first noted by Virginia Virtucon and then spread by this blog, among others.
