"Without catblogging, blogging just isn't worth the effort"

"To some, the point is that posting pictures of their animals provides a chance to introduce a softer personality into blogs that are often hard-edged," writes a clueless Daniel Terdiman in a New York Times puff (fluff?) piece "On Fridays, Bloggers Sometimes Retract Their Claws" [via TBIFOC]:

"It's just nice for bloggers to do things that show themselves as ordinary people," Mr. Drum said, "not just partisan political writers."

"It brings people together," said Kevin Drum, who began the cat spotlight last year on his own blog, Calpundit. "Both Atrios and Instapundit have done Friday catblogging. It goes to show you can agree on at least a few things."

These days, all kinds of bloggers are Friday catblogging, often playing around with the concept, even as Mr. Drum has stopped.

It's "just nice" and "brings people together" [can you say United Nations pipedreams?], and Drum hasn't cat blogged since last March, but that doesn't stop the Times from using the well-meaning but totally out-of-touch [like the MSM itself?] former catblogger -- including a picture of him and one of his precious pussycats, Inkblot -- as the centerpiece of their Behind-the-Times report. We beg to differ, of course. For fickle catbloggers like Drum, catblogging, like everything else, is all about them. True catblogging, on the contrary, is about the eternal feline. And it isn't about making nice but about looking to the animals for revelations about our common nature. As we blogged in July:

Mr. Drum abruptly stopped cat blogging last winter. At that time, he explained that "taking new pictures on schedule has become a bit of a chore. So this is the final edition of catblogging Friday."

As Dick Cheney might say, we disagree with the premise of your explanation. Just as you can't herd cats, you can't herd cat blogs down to any one day of the week. Take them where you may, and then send them along to the "Carnival of the Cats."

In the Times's favor, they interviewed the Father of All Catbloggers -- founder of the "Carnival of the Cats" -- Laurence Simon, albeit tucking This Blog Is Full of Crap blogger Simon's comments out of sight in the bowels of the article:

Some participants take Friday catblogging very seriously. Laurence Simon, a 35-year-old Houston technical support engineer, decided a while back that with so many people catblogging, it would be good to have a weekly compendium of the best of each week's entries.

So he began to post what he called the "Carnival of the Cats," a roundup of that week's Friday catblogging, available the following Sunday.

Inaccurate, of course, as we've come to expect of the Times. It isn't just Fridays anymore. In fact, it never was. As Simon says:

Without cats, there is no catblogging. Without catblogging, blogging just isn't worth the effort.

Prrrrr.

Comments

[Laurence Simon]

He got the URL right and spelled my name with a U instead of a W.

I registered the domain that morning and assembled the page from archives, of course. I don't think the NYT would directly link a site called isfullofcrap.com, and it needed its own domain.

[Sissy Willis]

You're right. They reserve the isfullofcrap.com domain for themselves. :)

[acjgoomp]

Spoken like a true feline philosopher.

[Old Grouch]

It's "just nice" and "brings people together" [can you say United Nations pipedreams?]

<CUE MUSIC!>
It's a Small World After All...
<gunshot, scream following>

blech! hairball time...

[TallDave]

Hear, hear.

My kittens weren't even my idea to get (that idea came from my gf at the time), but I fell in love with them the instant we saw the tiny, friendly, incredibly beautiful little miracles at the airport freight counter where they were sent from the breeder in Seattle. They were not bothered at all by the flight, but got right out and starting walking around the counter, playing on the keyboard and exploring the hidden recesses of the brochure-holders. I was stricken by the irrational worry something might happen to them on the short car drive home and dazed by the idea that anything so precious could belong to me, and three years later I've never really lost that feeling.

It really is all about the feline.