A Mea Culpa from Mike

I'm sorry to clutter up the main page with this, but I feel since I attacked a particular blogger on these pages, I owe him an apology with the same prominence.

My name is Mike, and I'm the guest blogger who made the post below entitled "$40 Mill for the Prez's Party -- $15 Mill for the Homeless, Sick & Dying." The person who is the head honcho of this blog is Jazz, but there are other bloggers, named Mu, Ron, Tami, and Georg. You can tell who the author of a post is by looking at the "posted by" credit directly beneath the posts' title.

If you would like to e-mail me about this article to curse me out, please write me here. Please do so instead of writing to Jazz.

In the aforementioned post, I singled out The Waiter, the blogger behind the well-written funny Waiter Rant blog, as an example of a behavior I don't find useful: simply posting links to charities without actually donating to same. However, at the time that I did this singling out, I really had no evidence one way or the other that he had or had not donated, and it was extremely unfair and wrong of me to single him out in such a fashion. (And, as it turns out, he had indeed donated.)

My intention behind the rant was simply that I do not feel that bloggers should be satisfied with the sole goal of disseminating charity links to increase awareness this time around, especially given the massiveness of this disaster. I've both blogged and read blogs for quite some time, and over that time, I've observed a very concerning behavior/tendency in the Internet community at large: the tendency to consider blogging -- in and of itself -- action on an issue. Don't get me wrong, I do recognize that blogging can indeed have a positive effect on issues, but I honestly don't feel it is as effective as many other actions out there, such as a real paper letter to a Congressperson, attending a rally, finding and attending or donating to a grassroots group for your cause, etc. There are lots of "real life" actions that could have greater effect on extremely concerning issues, if bloggers would simply push their chairs away from the computer. Note that I don't exclude myself from this criticism.

That having been said, it was entirely unfair, and quite wrong, of me to single someone out as an example of this behavior for no good reason aside from they happened to be the last place I had seen the set of links. Waiter, I apologize.

I should also clarify that the quotation from Scripture was meant solely to apply as criticism towards the Administration's lackluster donation of $15 million, which I found extremely unimpressive when compared to expenditures for something as insignificant as the President's various upcoming 2005 inaugural parties. It was not directed to bloggers. This Administration and this President has continually professed a deep tie with God and with Christ. Regardless of my own beliefs, I find particularly galling for him to then ignore one of Christ's most prominent teachings about alleviating suffering. It strikes me as hypocritical and immoral in the extreme.

Sorry for the controversy. We now return you to the normally astute commentary on Running Scared.