No blogging in almost two months tells me that I just might need to rethink how I’m organizing this personal site.

Meanwhile, check this out. I won’t be doing much with it until I finish revisions on my current book (which will hopefully be this week), but it’s a new kind of writing that some friends of mine have suggested that I should try for a long time. I don’t know where or if it will go, but I’m willing to play it by ear and see.

…but only by a moustache, and specifically because of his position on health care. Greg Davis is a great young candidate whose positions on social issues seem to be indistinguishable from those of Childers. I don’t think Davis would embarrass us–I don’t think Roger Wicker did, either–but the number one domestic priority in 2009 should be health care reform, and Childers is on the right side of that issue.

(Update 4/28: My endorsement of Childers has gotten substantially firmer, because Greg Davis has revealed himself to be bad news. I don’t know if this ad constitutes race-baiting–it’s easy to imagine Davis doing the same with Clinton or Kerry–but it will have that effect, and “he said nothing” is a pretty line of attack anyway. Childers would be well advised to put out a parody ad–”When Greg Davis’ brother-in-law’s veterinarian supported the Patriots over the Saints, he said nothing”–but he probably won’t. Anyway, Childers by much more than a moustache now.)

…that I didn’t know a year ago:

1. Making a blogosphere community–any blogosphere community–a central part of your social life is probably a mistake. Blog people who don’t know you in person generally don’t know the real you (most people who know you in person _still_ don’t know the real you), and while they may love what they see of you, they will not understand what makes you tick.

2. If you speak out forcefully for black folks and you’re white, or if you speak out forcefully for Latinos and you’re non-Latino, or you speak out forcefully for women and you’re male, or you speak out forcefully for LGBTs and you’re straight, some people–even very good, very progressive people–who share your privilege will question your motives, see you as a traitor, and lash out. This I knew. What I didn’t know: This is universal, and by publicly complaining about it I only reveal that I haven’t been speaking out all that much until recently.

3. Moral purification through emotional self-flagellation is an empty and narcissistic goal. In (if I’m lucky) 60 or 70 years, I will be a perfectly peaceful, non-racist, non-sexist, non-heterosexist corpse who never says or does the wrong thing. Meanwhile, back on Earth, people are hurting, dreams are being denied, opportunities are being squandered. That’s where I should focus my energy.

4. Compared to interpersonal drama, emotional self-flagellation actually looks pretty good. Better to emotionally flagellate myself than emotionally flagellate others. Don’t obsess over beefs, feuds, or other forms of personal drama. Ever. If you have enough energy to do that, you have enough energy to focus on more productive and enjoyable pursuits. As a wise young activist told me: Be in it for the issues; don’t be in it to be liked.

5. Stop worrying about whether or not you’re accomplishing “enough” or working hard “enough” to be “good enough.” As per #3, “enough” means I’m dead. If I haven’t done enough, that means I’m still alive. Alive is good.

This page isn’t really together yet. Consider this beta testing. Once I’ve tidied it up a bit, it’ll have a bigger blogroll, a resumé, ads (probably), and little spots where you can order my books and keep track of what I’ve written online lately.

Meanwhile, you’ve got the blog. And a really neat photo above courtesy of Shawn Zehnder Lea. I cropped it a bit, though; you can see the original here. I thought about keeping the full horizontal dimensions, then realized that if I did, the de facto name of this blog would be “Jackson Miss.” That’s not a bad name for a blog, but after a few years of people walking up to me at parties and saying “Hey, you’re Jackson Miss!,” I think it might get old.

If you’re a Mississippian and run a blog that isn’t already on the blogroll, please feel free to promote it in the comments field here.

Thursday’s blog entry originally consisted of a defense of numbers reported by the Clarion-Ledger re: Tuesday’s primary. I deleted it because I realized that I, not being particularly good with numbers, made things more complicated than they had to be.

But you know, this isn’t really about the numbers. Natalie and Leah could have temporarily reported false numbers in a breaking news story on a web site–any of us could have; we’re all human–and it still wouldn’t justify calling them “stupid chicks … [who are] dumb at math” or any of the other thinly-veiled misogynistic slurs that a small group of local bloggers used to describe their coverage of the election results.

And that’s the real problem–not the intricacies of Democratic turnout. Both of these journalists had public email addresses and public phone numbers. Declining to use either option to contact them, choosing instead to smear these talented and hardworking young journalists on a public blog, is simply wrong.

And it’s particularly depressing to me that the main thing I and some other folks now think of vis-a-vis Mississippi’s primary turnout is not “gee, it’s great that we had record turnout,” but “gosh, it was nasty how some local bloggers used those numbers to attack good people.” Just like it’s depressing to me that the main thing I and some other folks think of vis-a-vis the proposed civil rights museum at Tougaloo is not “gee, it’s great that we’re going to have one,” but “gosh, it was nasty how some local bloggers used that to attack good people.”

I can take some comfort in the fact that blogosphere attacks are about as memorable as a Big Mac and that in six months, we’ll all remember the high turnout and museum at Tougaloo while the nastiness surrounding both will be further from our minds. But right now, the incredible good news in both stories is soured for me by the way a few folks with too much time on their hands found a way to use even good news as a weapon against others.

This is, unfortunately, the way the blogosphere tends to work. And I’m increasingly coming to terms with the fact that there’s absolutely nothing I can do about that.

…after sitting down and reading an issue cover-to-cover for the first time.

You know what? Sometimes my impression of a newspaper is considerably more positive after I’ve actually, you know, read it.

- Obama wins with 60%? That makes me happy.

- Joel Gill beating Randy Eads? That’s disappointing. Eads was, by far, the better candidate. But at least there’s a Democratic nominee this time around.

- Glad Fleming beat O’Hara. It would be a sad, sad state of affairs if he didn’t.

- Childers-Holland and Ross-Harper as the dual runoffs? Interesting races developing there.

- Turnout was +/-545,000 according to Cotton Mouth, which is almost four times as many as predicted. Good for Mississippi!

- Hats off to the Clarion-Ledger’s Natalie Chandler and Leah Rupp for providing the best print coverage of the election cycle in the state.

The die has been cast. Now it’s time to fully support the civil rights museum at Tougaloo–make sure the donations come in, make sure the support is there, make sure it gets built, and make sure it becomes a national destination.

I don’t envy the committee’s decision. I still don’t know how I would have voted. But I have tremendous respect for Tougaloo as a site, and it’s an entirely appropriate location for the museum.

And there are successful, nationally known museums that aren’t located downtown. The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, to name an obvious example.

…and it was amazing.

Attendance is being reported as 8,000, but I think it was higher than that. 8,000 is the normal seating capacity of the auditorium for basketball games; we had normal seating plus hundreds of extra seats, press balconies, and an overflow area, plus a number of people who were standing. I would say the number probably falls between 10,000 and 12,000. It was filled to absolute maximum capacity–folks were being turned away 10 minutes after the doors opened.

Obama in person is exactly like Obama on TV. There is no difference. Everything about him carries through–so it’s really no wonder that he blows away all of his opponents in the charisma department. I would not want to be John McCain in November if Obama is the Democratic nominee. With respect for McCain, and he deserves a lot of respect, it would be like watching the Kennedy-Nixon debate for five months.