Considering political blogs have been used to make some of the most offensive and pointed remarks and insults you'd probably ever see, I would think you'd have to have a pretty thick skin in order to be one.  This hobby (or for some, business) isn't pretty.

Yet the lengths that some people will go to get back at some of their critics amazes me.  If you email comments from work, you could set yourself up to be fired due to a blogger that wants revenge.  Insult the wrong person on your blog, and your email address, your home and work phone number, and your home address could be subject to a protest campaign by a rival blogger.  One well known blogger was even threatened with legal action with a comment that was obviously taken out of context, yet it was enough to keep him from blogging for about three or four months.

I'm not one to tell a blogger how to operate his/her blog or what to write about (I'm not one who believes in an "organized" blogosphere with rules; that sort of stuff is better left to the gentry), but I would think delving into opinionated writing would take some very thick skin when the critics come around.  It's very telling that a number of the highly popular blogs - particularly on the conservative side - either don't allow comments or have very tightly controlled comment areas.  Some do it because they don't want the headache of maintaining it; others don't because, well, they love the control and would rather ignore and delete the terse remarks rather than confront them, regardless of whether there are concise arguments or just pointless rants.

As for me and this blog, look at the top right of the screen and you should see my tagboard.  If you scroll down, you can see there's a lot of comments that aren't pretty.  That's fine, though, because those types of comments serve a purpose, as they highlight the ignorant nature that some will have towards views and beliefs contrary to their own, especially from the left.  Rather than run from them, I embrace them, because every time a new one pops up (and not from the same person, as I can tell the difference) it tells me I must be doing something right.  There's no need to complain about hate rhetoric either, because it simply comes with the territory (in fact, I tend to laugh when I read other blogs that whine about it, as I've frequented a number of discussion boards and blogs and have been called everything except a child of God).

But there is a big difference between how I and a handful of other bloggers dwell in the blogosphere compared to the rest, and nowadays you'll get a reminder every couple of days.  It could be that phone number a blogger posts to have you call and "tell someone what you think",  Or that email letter writing campaign, or even that IP address that is posted on a blog.  Maybe even someone who gets fired because a rival blogger finds out where he work and decides to harrass his job.

And you think I'm about give out my real name anytime soon?  Pssh...yeah right.