Cat Bloggers of the World Unite

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James Joyner | Thursday, October 28, 2004

On Fridays, Bloggers Sometimes Retract Their Claws (NYT)

In the vitriolic world of political Web logs, two polar extremes are Eschaton (atrios.blogspot.com), a liberal, often anti-Bush site with a passionate following, and Instapundit (www.instapundit.com), where an equally fervent readership goes for hearty praise of the Administration. It would seem unlikely that the two blogs’ authors could see eye-to-eye about anything. Yet Eschaton’s Duncan Black (known as Atrios) and Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds have both taken part in a growing practice: turning over a blog on Friday to cat photographs.

“It brings people together,” said Kevin Drum, who began the cat spotlight last year on his own blog, Calpundit (www.calpundit.com). “Both Atrios and Instapundit have done Friday catblogging. It goes to show you can agree on at least a few things.” Mr. Drum has moved on to write a blog for The Washington Monthly called Political Animal, which, despite its name, features no cats. But for him, watching bloggers step back from partisanship in favor of the warmth of cat pictures is a reminder of the March 2003 day when he discovered that his cats offered an antidote to stressful blogging. “I’d just blogged a whole bunch of stuff about what was wrong with the world,” Mr. Drum said. “And I turned around and I looked out the window, and there was one of my cats, just plonked out, looking like nothing was wrong with the world at all.”

Indeed.

While I would challenge the assertion that Eschaton, which is stridently leftist and includes a vitriolic comments board, and InstaPundit, a linkfest that’s mostly moderate libertarian and seldom includes reader comments, are polar opposites, cat blogging is an amusing diversion.

Kevin and Duncan post their own thoughts on the piece. Indeed, Kevin even does some catblogging. Perhaps he should relaunch CalPundit (CatPundit?) as a cats-only site since he’s largely stopped the practice at Political Animal.