News-Record.com

A memorable quote, pulled from an otherwise unmemorable thumbsucker post by Lance Mannion about men bloggers v. women bloggers, wonks v. writers and oh who cares ...

[Blogger] Atrios is never one to write the op-ed writer's version of "If I may be so bold as to interrupt for a moment" when "[Expletive] that [expletive]!" will do the trick. But [bloggers] [Matthew] Yglesias, [Kevin] Drum and Josh Marshall write as if the writer they most admire is [LA Times editorial-page editor] Michael Kinsley, who is, whatever you think of his style, and I think it's a little on the precious side, no Mark Twain.

Twain wrote with a pen warmed up in Hell. Kinsley writes as if with a keyboard that's been kept in a temperature-controlled room in a cloister, dusted off daily by nuns, and then handed to him when he calls for it, in a polite whisper of course, by the youngest and most innocent novice wearing white gloves. ...

A front line of bloggers all writing like Michael Kinsley is not going to set the world on fire.

"Dusted off daily by nuns." Hee.

But really. I write with a stultifying editorial voice here because I have to. (Well, posts about running with scissors aside.) But that doesn't mean YOU have to. Light it up. Sure, use facts and logic and all, but for cryin' out loud, don't write like us -- we're hemorrhaging readers, remember? Besides, if blogging ain't fun, then what's the point?

(And can you freakin' imagine Mark Twain as a blogger?)

UPDATE: Missing link restored, thanks to Anna in comments below.

FURTHER UPDATE: Lance responds to point out, correctly, that I forgot to warn you about the nudity on his site. If you lost your job because you stumbled onto his NSFW photo of the Australian women's soccer team just as the boss was peering over your shoulder, I apologize.