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Enough Already about A.N. SmithIt's disgusting that we have to put up with hour after hour of our news media covering the death of a pathetic, morally impaired, clearly over-drugged woman. I find myself changing the channels today, turning off any channel that gives me the newest information on the final hours of Anna Nicole Smith's life. Ironically, earlier in the day, yesterday, before she died, CNN ran a special on her meaningless, celebrity based on nothing meaningful life-- and the videos of her all showed a woman heavily drugged, dopey and out of it. As soon as I heard of her death, it was clear, she was not another Marilyn. She was another Elvis, who drowned in her own vomit. Makes me think hopefully of pretzels.
Sandy Sands writes One Blonde's Death is More Important to Media Than the Deaths of 3,114 Soldiers as a commentary on this. I assume in the coming days, we will be informed exactly what were the contents of her vomit.
Kudos to John Edwards for Standing Up To a Nasty Right Wing Attack and Doing the Right Thing With His Bloggers
I wrote, on Wednesday, that John Edwards was facing a test-- how he would handle the bloggers who were attacked by extremist right wing creep William Donohue. Well Edwards passed the test and, in my opinion, showed that he can stand up to right wing swiftboaters. He did it intelligently, with class and strength. I don't have a candidate I've committed to yet. But I've liked what I've seen from Edwards thus far and this latest move definitely gained him points with me.
Pelosi Envy. It's a Guy SIZE thing
Then, we have the Republicans in congress attack Nancy Pelosi. I wrote my article, "Pelosi Jet Size Envy" Leads Right Wingers to Get Egg On Faces to discuss this latest excursion to even lower depths by right wingers.
Who Writes for OpEdNews?
The answer is just about anyone. We have our share of big name writers, but what makes us stand out among media sites is our encouraging articles from average, every day people. Sure, we love to get articles from top writers, but we also love to discover great writing from "we the people."
Take David Baake's article. How Do You Want To Be Viewed By History? David is under 20. Could have fooled me. You could be our next top writer. What makes a top writer? If your article pulls more readers over a day or a week, you could be a top writer. Currently, our stats are back panel, and not easy to access, so I don't encourage writers to email me asking where their article stand. But I will, on ocassion, drop our writers a note, letting them know their article was in the top five. To write for OpEdNews, you don't have to come up with a brilliant new interpretation of current events. You can make some close to home observations about life around you. Walter Brasch's article, Rural America Explains Why The Nation Needs Martin Luther King Day, linked to below, is a wonderful example of observing local happenings. Some of the best writing we see is a person reporting something happening in his or her life-- down to earth, real, often touching the heart. So, if you're wondering whether we'll look at your writing-- the answer is yes. We expect you to write well, to use a spell checker, to read your article out loud to be sure you clean up grammar errors and misspellings that spell checkers don't pick up. And if you're making claims, or referring to other articles, we'd like you to include links, documenting them. Last but not least, you don't have to write about politics. We figure that our readers, are not only interested in politics, but that also eat, travel, buy things, garden, decorate their homes, go out for entertainment-- and we're always happy to see articles on all and any sundry topics.
Paying the Bills
We didn't get a single contribution yesterday. Maybe that's because I didn't ask. So... here's a reminder. We DO need your support to keep going. Please make a generous contribution
Major Problems with the Election Reform Bill Rush Holt Has Introduced
There are three articles today, on the site, By Bev Harris, Kathy Dopp and Andi Novick, discussing problems with the current form of legislation to "improve" election laws-- particularly relating to e-voting and making vote counting more reliable and trustworthy. Please check them out and let your legislators know that Rush Holt's bill is not good enough.
Thanks
Rob Kall
