My Post on Peter Schorsch's Post on Ben Kirby's Post

Peter Schorsch declares the Florida political blogosphere dead after Benjamin Kirby declared he was retiring from blogging. I am somewhat skeptical about Kirby staying retired. Kirby left the door open for blogging.

And I like to think I'll be back in blog form at some point. It'll probably be different --probably won't be focused on politics, or at least not solely focused on politics.

If you really want to retire, you do what Jim Johnson of State of Sunshine and stop blogging. Johnson still writes the occasional post. He spends most of his free time doing community theatre with the Carrollwood Players. If Kirby is onstage playing Richard III, I might be more convinced about his retirement.

Kirby isn't aware that he contradicted himself in these two paragraphs of his post.

I was listening to NPR the other morning, driving up 66th Street. The subject was something like transitional power in Afghanistan, followed by the impact of sequester, followed by more political news.

After about a mile and a half, I slammed my palm onto the steering wheel and screamed as loud as I could, "Fuck!" Because for as important as all of those stories really are, I could not bring myself to care. Even a little bit.

If Kirby doesn't care he wouldn't have gotten angry. Do you think Kim Kardashian ever slammed her hand after hearing news about Afghanistan?

The Florida blogosphere When I started Pushing Rope the Tampa blogosphere was Rachel Moran, Right-Wing Howler, Tampa Taxi Shots, Out In Left Field and the peanut gallery at Sticks of Fire. These bloggers would post sexist and anti-Islamic missives on their blogs. Moran advocated for beating up homeless people on-camera. I would write about the hate rants on these sites and get attacked. I don't have Schorsch's romantic view on the blogosphere of the past. I happen to think things are better now. There is room for improvement. Bloggers like myself and Litbrit couldn't get readers back in the day. Now we get media attention and win awards.