Blogroll Amnesty Day

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Many blogs are celebrating Blogroll Amnesty Day in reverse of how it turned out last year. Last year Atrios began Blogroll Amnesty Day as explained by Jon Swift:

The idea that links are the capital of the blogosphere seems so obvious that you would think an economist like Atrios of Eschaton would have realized it long ago. And as he is a progressive who has accumulated quite a bit of link wealth, you might also think he would be in favor of redistributing some of that wealth instead of just letting it trickle down. So when he announced last year that he was declaring February 3 Blogroll Amnesty Day, and other bloggers followed suit, I assumed he meant that he was opening his blogroll up to the masses. I sent him a polite email pointing out that his blog was on my blogroll and I would really appreciate it if he would add my blog to his. I never heard back from him.

When February 3 rolled around, many bloggers discovered to their horror that instead of adding new blogs to his blogroll he was throwing many off, including some bloggers who were his longtime friends. Blogroll Amnesty Day, it turned out, was a very Orwellian concept. Instead of granting amnesty to others he was granting amnesty to himself not to feel bad for hurting others feelings. Though Atrios has stubbornly refused to acknowledge that he made a mistake, some bloggers who initially joined him, backtracked. Markos of the Daily Kos instituted a second blogroll that consisted of random links from diarists. PZ Myers of Pharyngula now has real Blogroll Amnesty Days where he invites anyone who has blogrolled him to join his blogroll. And in the wake of the bloodletting quite a number of smaller blogs, like my friend skippy the bush kangaroo, changed their own blogroll policies and now link more freely to others.

Jon has more to say on the topic, as does Skippy. This year Blogroll Amnesty Day is being used the opposite of last year as a means for blogs to expand their links to other blogs.

The blogroll at Liberal Values has grown over the past year. Most of the additions have come from either people who emailed me about exchanging links, or blogs which I found had linked here. (That should definitely be taken as a hint if you would like to exchange links.) As the number of reciprocal links has increased, I’ve limited my blogroll to a handful of additional blogs I read regularly, and a variety of other blogs which I randomly change.

I think the best way to celebrate is to take a stroll through the blogroll and give some random examples of what I’ve stumbled upon:

An Insatiable Yucca has a dream ticket: Both Clinton and Obama.

Argville is rewatching The West Wing on DVD and feels it now is looking more like reality due to the prospects of having a Democrat in the White House. Unfortunately an Arnold Vinick running as the Republican candidate remains a fantasy.

Susan Eisenhower’s endorsement of Barack Obama brings back old memories for Robert Stein at Connecting The Dots.

Easter Lemming Liberal News looks at what’s wrong with newspapers.

From the Left notes Paul Volker’s endorsement of Obama.

KerryVision finds that John McCain is a flip-flopper.

Liberal College Kid believes endorsements have gone amuck.

Middle Earth Journal believes conservative has replaced liberal as a toxic tag.

Publius Endures considers international perspectives of Obama.

The Liberal Journal answers some concerns about Obama.

Update: More on Blogroll Amnesty Day from Blue Gal, as well as links to her post via Memeorandum.

3 Comments

  1. 1
    Mark says:

    Thanks, Ron!
    Funny that you linked one of my own Amnesty Day posts…I guess that makes your link count double!

  2. 2
    skippy says:

    thanks for participating, ron!

  3. 3
    Christopher says:

    Thanks for the mention dude!

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