Bloggasm

Unqualified Offerings is the weblog of freelance writer and accounting analyst Jim Henley, who lives in Silver Spring, MD with his family in an unprepossessing subdivision. Preoccupations include what passes for national security, politics, comic books and science fiction, health and fitness, and poetry. UO went live on October 21, 2001.

Simon Owens: As the election season gears up, do you think that the major political blogs will have more political clout than usual?

Jim Henley: Well, there’s no “usual” yet. It’s only the last election cycle or two where blogs have had a chance to play a significant role, either on the editorial or advertising side.

Simon Owens: Most people can’t help but notice that political groups are starting to advertise on political blogs in mass numbers. During an election year, are political blogs more profitable than usual?

Jim Henley: At the very least, they’re starting to talk about reading them – to admit to reading them. Who knows how long they’ve been reading them without letting on.

Simon Owens: Has blogging affected your political outlook on life at all since you’ve started? Has it caused you to follow current events more closely than you did before?

Jim Henley: I think blogging has. In the 1990s I maintained a fairly conventional right-libertarian stereotype of the “America-hating liberal.” Blogs have shown me that liberals have all sorts of ideas and assumptions I don’t agree with, but not the animus toward the country I used to imagine. Meanwhile, I’ve seen many conservatives and fellow libertarians exemplify what I used to consider characteristically “liberal” vices, like right-wing equivalents of “political correctness.”

Simon Owens: How often do readers in your comments section give you a new insight on a story you’ve highlighted?

Jim Henley: At least daily.

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs you’d recommend to supplement the reading of your own?

Jim Henley: Radley Balko’s civil-liberties-themed The Agitator is indispensible. I call him America’s Most Important Blogger and I mean it. Crooked Timber is a great left-wing group blog by a bunch of academic types. Matthew Yglesias is my favorite liberal blogger and James Joyner’s Outside the Beltway is the best conservative newsblog/portal. Reason’s Hit and Run has the most enjoyable comment threads. I’m going to hurt people’s feelings stopping at five but you said.