Canada's Debate

Nothing seems to get bloggers’ undies in a twist like Warren Kinsella. To be honest, I’ve never understood why. The guy is sometimes abrasive, sometimes controversial, and frequently able to out-scoop the rest of us. Then again, the same can be said of just about anyone on the blogosphere… and yet bloggers who are able to exert some political influence are usually only targeted by those who sit somewhere across the aisles, politically at least. Kinsella is a lightning-rod for criticism from every direction… and I still can’t figure it out.

Take for example his post the other day (I believe it was saturday.) He wrote a top-ten list for his favourite political blogs, and in it lamented the lack of “smart” female representation on the interwebs. I took this at face value: “Kinsella feels that women are underrepresented in the blogging world.” Apparently just about everyone else took it as, “Kinsella ignores women.”

Now, I know it is a risk to extrapolate from the blogging world to the wider political arena, but there is a lesson to be learned from this. When we allow our own prejudices to inform the statements of others, we potentially end up losing an important message. The truth is that whatever statistical measurements are available to us indicate that the majority of political bloggers in Canada are male; and it is not unreasonable to suggest or assume that the frequency of intelligent bloggers would be roughly the same between the two genders. There are obviously any number of intelligent female bloggers in the game. I have two on my blogroll (April Reign and Red Jenny) and frequently read others such as Michelle’s World and Liberal Catnip. Kinsella happened to pick his favourites, and remarked that he sees less female ones than male ones in his travels over the ‘net… nothing more and nothing less.