Good line. Wish I’d said it first, but Google tells me I’m at least 115 results too late. Bill Clinton might’ve said it, too. However, only a few seem to have intended it as I did. One is the now abandoned godofthemachine.com, which put it succinctly:
In life all politics is local: on blogs all politics is national.
I didn’t invent it, but maybe I can still popularize it. I’ll try to remember to use that where it applies — a lot of places, I’d think. Consider your help solicited.
The line comes from a post dated 7/16/03, titled “The Immutable Laws of Blog Comments.” It holds up well enough that I’ve included the full text, after the jump.
The Immutable Laws of Blog Comments 1. The briefer and less substantive the post, the greater the number of comments. (Lemma: The briefer and less substantive the post, the likelier a link from Instapundit. Not that I would know.) 2. The more political the post, the greater the number of comments. There are ten people with ill-informed opinions on politics for every one with an ill-informed opinion on philosophy or poetry. This applies to U.S. politics only; nobody cares what goes on in your home town, or your home country if it’s Canada. In life all politics is local: on blogs all politics is national. 3. The more personal the post, the greater the number of comments. There are ten people with ill-informed opinions on you for every one with an ill-informed opinion on politics. 4. The greater the number of comments to a post, the lower their overall quality. 5. A soft answer turneth away trolls. 6. All of my commenters are excepted from all of the above rules.
Not bad, though #5 hasn’t fared well as of late.
Update, 8/24: From the comments:
Abandoned eh? That was then; this is now.
Abandoned eh? That was then; this is now.