I may not know much about blogging, but I know what I (don't) like.

I refuse to be embroiled in the petty, petty, petty M A-B affair, so this is my disclaimer.
Note that I'm not going to use her name. It is apparently blogger etiquette to not use a person's real name. Hell, even the Capital Hill 'Washingtonienne' intern blogger didn't use real names.

The first entry into this blog explained that I started it up to see if I could gain any insight into why people do blog (blog is a verb too, apparently), in a kind of lazy, pseudo-ethnographic way. In my few months as a sporadic contributor to the net of inaccuracies and hyperbole that is the blog world, I have come to identify a few reasons as to why somebody would start, and continue to use, a blog. Let's pretend we can divide reasons for blogging into two categories.

1. Genuine creative outlet. Some people, like me, have little to no undertanding or ability in computer programming. A blog is a user friendly way to transmit one's thoughts, potentially to a large number of people. This, of course, assumes you have something to say and, frankly, blogs are usually run by people falsely thinking they do have something to say (excluding myself, I know I have nothing to say).
At the very least, a blog allows a person to say whatever tripe they care to contribute to the world, worthwhile or not. Even if one has nothing to say, the ability to say it far outweighs the need to have it said.

2. Personal outlet. If a blogger indeed has nothing to say, they might claim to use a blog as a journal or diary, unfit for anyone's eyes except very close friends. Except, as anyone who has ever left a diary open at a certain page so that somebody will see it and scream 'poor x!' knows, journals encourage self-serving crap and a level of simultaneous narcissism and self-hatred. Why would somebody broadcast their personal information over the net? Because it's not strictly personal, is it? What is the point of secrets if nobody knows them? Who will pay attention to your mental digressions if you can't tell anyone about them? Exactly.
An offshoot of the drown-in-own-sorrow journals is blogging as a way to keep track of important or semi-important events, a reference point for stories over beers. While these actually are terrible for mateship, since stories are transformative and get embellished and downright changed over time, it is nice to have some kind of record of a good night out to remember some of the never-sung stories.
Still, the question remains: why do it online rather than in a series of Word documents? It seems that bloggers cannot help but open thsemselves up to scrutiny.

So, then, should M A-B expect a level of privacy? Her having numerous blogs online (full of shit, but no more than any other blog, this one included) regarding somewhat personal matters coupled with a semi-public position has made her ripe for targeting. Well, how hard is that? I could pick any blog at random and write nasty things about it, using the kind of annoying hyperbole that often is found in place of reason or structured arguments.
Is it that being a member of a student organization rightfully open a person up to any kinds of attacks? M A-B hasn't helped matters by letting her personal and public life converge in some of her publications. That is, however, what the student press is about.

In sum, I don't know. Maybe the person in question deserves everything she gets, but I can't quite see why being 'deserving' should equal actually carrying out the deserts. So much for benevolence. I mean, scratch hard enough and you can find an idiot inside every 20 year old.

I'm not going to give an opinion on the girl herself. This isn't that kind of forum, and I'm not that kind of guy. In fact, student politics - or whatever we call this annoying sledging between moronic pinkos and derranged reactionaries - makes me sick to my very being.

M A-B may have said some repugnant things in her blogs, but does that make it ok to use them when attacking her repugnant actions as a member of student council? I don't know. Thus, since I don't know if the public and personal should converge, I can't get involved.