Wow – a 4-month gap between posts is likely a new record for this humble blog. That is not going to be good for business. Indeed, that is not going to be good for anyone.
It would be quite an understatement to say that I care a great deal about this blog. Going by blogspot, the first post dates back to July 2003 — when I was but a young man (who didn’t know what he wanted to be). The times offered fertile grounds for the Sadly, No! variety of blogging, at a time when there wasn’t much of it (blogging that is — inane commentary predates this blog and the internet). Bush II was a terrible president, and those who supported him and were around in those days, whether they fancied themselves honest intellectuals (David Frum), always wrong timepieces (Bill Kristol), plain crazy alternate reality would-be economists (Donald Luskin), or those who decided that throwing away their reputation in the service of incompetent power (Colin Powell, Tony Blair), deserved every profanity-filled blog post ever written.
The army of court jesters that also appeared (Justin Darr and Amber Pawlik come to mind) was the icing on the cake. So from that day on, and thanks to a large number of extremely funny and great writers over the years, the blog continued. Eventually, as student life became working life, and as working life became married life, and married life became father of 1 and then father of 2 life, I had to, as we say at work, prioritize. So that over the last few years 99% of my contribution has been paying the bills. (Granted the traffic no longer requires much bandwidth, but a database that comprises over 800K comments and over 9,000 posts does limit low-cost options).
Fact checking Donald Trump is probably most like explaining gravity to a chicken. Neither one cares, and even if you did find the best way of explaining it ever, it wouldn’t make a difference. Some Republican officials may pretend to be shocked at Trump’s behavior, but corporations and rich folks can never have enough money so unless Trump starts pushing for an increase to the minimum wage he need not worry. As for the Fox News viewers contingent, I can’t decide if they believe everything Trump says, or if they are simply happy every one of his pronouncements is a big fat “fuck you” to people they don’t like (which is the overwhelming majority of Americans at this point). So as much as Trump and his enablers can never get enough ridicule, it’s been harder to find the time and energy to contribute.
A lot of really awesome blogs continue to be around — and while no one may care what I think, I don’t see how one gets by not reading LGM, No More Mister Nice Blog, or alicublog. Many of the blogs I read daily many moons ago are still around, though I often wonder why. When things have reached a point where your blog consists exclusively of open threads, daily reminders that self-driving cars are a stupid idea, and posts that would have been interesting had they gone on for more than 3 sentences rather than limiting themselves to Twitter-length (because why not I guess?), then why bother at all?
At various times over my years of Sadly, No! neglect I’ve come back to say I am back — only to disappear again. So my aim for this first 2018 post is simply to say hello. Let’s see what happens.
