Michael Stickings of The Reaction blog was suggesting that I might want to do more blogging that quotes. You know the kind of thing: “I found this interesting article” followed by a quote from the article. I think he’s worried about my health. He’s been at this blogging things for a long time (almost 8 years), and I think he has seen his fair share of blogger burn-out.

I told him that I’ve tried to do that. I just want to share something. So I start writing an introduction to it. And before I know it, I have five paragraphs and I haven’t even gotten to talking about whatever it is I started to write about. So logorrhea is part of the problem. Speaking of logorrhea, Not I by Samuel Beckett.

I was thinking of what Michael had said earlier today because of two stories I’ve read. The first was Ryan Grim excellent discussion of the Fiscal Cliff, that I wrote about earlier. The second, was an amazing (not necessarily in a good way) story about the presidential campaign over at the Boston Globe, which I will write about this evening. I’ve already seen other people writing about these articles. But the articles are all pretty much one sentence introductions followed by long quoted sections. I’m not really interested in doing this.

If you are Digby or Mark Thoma, it makes sense. Both of them have a large readership and, especially Thomas, read a lot of obscure things. But I only have one thing to offer: my insights. So unless I have something to add, there doesn’t seem to be much point. Unfortunately, that seems to be more the norm among bloggers.

There is an irony to all of this. Despite what Michael said, most of the articles that appear on The Reaction are not of that kind. They tend to be pretty quotation light. Certainly there are exceptions; there are exceptions here too: videos posts, Twitter posts, all of my quotation series. But generally, The Reaction adds to the debate rather than just amplifying it. And that’s what I want to do.

At least until I collapse exhausted on my keyboardaejrfffffff fffffffffff fffffffff ffffff ffoi vvvvvvvvv vvvvvv oijwjwj wjwjwjwjw jwjwjwjw