Gender difference in the blogosphere... blah blah blah...

Ellen Goodman ponders the political blogosphere:

[T]he liberal political bloggers mimic the conservative talk-show hosts. The chief messengers are overwhelmingly men -- white men, even angry white men...

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos and namesake of the convention, said unabashedly in an ABC News interview last year, "I learned to talk the way I do in the US Army. And we don't mince words. In politics, I don't see it any different. I see it as a battlefield." The American Prospect's Garance Franke-Ruta, who was on the panel notes, wryly, "If you're an angry man you're righteous. If you're an angry woman, you're crazy or a bitch."

Hey, that's especially funny to me, since I once expressed anger at Garance Franke-Ruta and got called a crazy bitch!

Back to Goodman:

Is it harassment?... Who knows how many women are scared silent.

Is it because men raise their hands first in class?...

Goodman doesn't really have too much to say, but I note that she doesn't come up with one idea that's not about how men are a problem. Somehow women never have any shortcomings. It's really a shame, because if you're a woman, then there's nothing you can change about yourself to do better. But Goodman is just following that lame old rule of journalism about gender difference: men, bad; women, good.

ADDED: Captain Ed says:

Instead of actually acknowledging the blogosphere as an open market, Goodman tries to imply that the "new boy" network keeps women out through intimidation. "Who knows how many women are scared silent," she writes after describing two cases of harassment, only one of which actually chased the blogger out of political commentary. Does Goodman ever ask the obvious question of whether harassment happens to men as well? No. Nor does she reveal any evidence that either of these two cases have any link to a conspiracy by The Man to keep women in their place....

Women have all the access necessary to this market to join and excel, if they want to do so. That should be the limit of the concern over diversity in the blogosphere.