Bloggers Celebrate Mardi Gras

Blogophile is written by CBSNews.com's Melissa P. McNamara

As Mardi Gras unfolded in New Orleans, the second celebration since Hurricane Katrina showed a city on the rebound, bloggers were happy to join in the revelry.

Last year's festivities were scaled down as the Big Easy began its recovery from the devastating hurricane, but this year 95 percent of the city's 30,000 hotel were filled.

Many bloggers across the country were proud to see New Orleans back on its feet for the celebration. "This year's Mardi Gras shows that New Orleans survived the storms and continues to recover. Way to go, NO! Happy Mardi Gras Day," a blogger at Just East of Eden blogs.

"It's been a fantastic carnival time and a lot of out-of-towners have been on hand to enjoy the fun," Ernie the Attorney adds.

"Ah, NOLA my love, how I miss you today," a blogger at Kat Tales writes, lamenting no longer living in the Big Easy.

But for some New Orleans natives, the thought of throngs of drunken tourists crowding their streets was enough to make them flee their own city, Jennifer Jordon writes at Blogging New Orleans. "Although it sounds truly blasphemous to me, as I am insanely jealous of anyone lucky enough to attend Mardi Gras, some folks in the New Orleans area want nothing better than to get out of town once the parades, and the endless hordes of tourists start rolling in," she explains.

Rogan Gets Inside Mencia's Head

A fight between comedians Joe Rogan and Carlos Mencia caught on tape is captivating bloggers and visitors to Rogan's site. The made-for-vlog fight began after Rogan accused Mencia of stealing his jokes — apparently, a view shared by many comedians.

As Rogan explains it, comedians often refer to Mencia as "Menstealia" because, he says, Mencia steals other comedians' lines. But when Rogan called him that name while he was in the room, Mencia was not happy about it, and told him so.

But don't expect any apologies from Rogan. As he writes on his blog, "Quite honestly, I'm happy to get this video and this blog out there, so that hopefully this can be the last time that I have talk about it."

Rogan's remarks got him suspended from performing at the Sunset Strip comedy club because Mencia said he would feel physically threatened by Rogan if the two were working at the same club together. But, online, bloggers champion Rogan and his fighting words.

"Spread this around! Stop the thief from getting away with it," Clint Lenard blogs at The Official Site Of Sooptyman. "Way to get at him Joe!"

"I have hated Menstealia since day one, and finally someone is going after him and taking him down," DarkStew blogs. "I've never liked Carlos, so I'm happy to have a good reason to dislike him now," Patrick writes at LiveJournal.

But some bloggers understand the temptation to pass along jokes. "love passing along jokes. When I hear something funny, I enjoy sharing it with others. Maybe they'll laugh as hard as I did," a blogger at Reflections of the Zen Master writes. "Then again, I don't do this for a living."

Happy Darwin Day!

Perhaps lost amid Valentine's Day celebrations — or anti-Valentine's Day outings — was a holiday celebrated by a small group of scientists. "Darwin Day" — a kind of Christmas for the science-minded, as Wired.com calls it – was a celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday and science.

This year's celebration also marked the150th Anniversary of the publication of Darwin's famous book, On The Origin of Species. Across the country, universities, schools and libraries are celebrating with talks and lectures about science, evolution and education.

The Discovery Institute honored the day, and Darwin, with a short vidcast, "Darwin Day and the Deification of Charles Darwin."

One blogger in the UK even started a petition to make "Darwin Day" a public holiday across the pond. Greg Laden celebrated the day in the blogosphere by linking to places where people could read Darwin's work online.

"It's hard to overstate the impact Darwin had on life as we know it," Matthew Hall blogs. "In many ways his theory of evolution, guided by natural selection, exerted more of an influence upon American Protestantism than any actual theological development."

But many people were not celebrating. "Set aside the scientific legacy for a moment to consider the less frequently discussed question of Darwin's moral heritage. This year happens to mark another anniversary as well: a tragic one, strongly linked to Darwinian theory," Amy Wellborne posts at Open Book, quoting a Weekly Standard article by David Klinghoffer. "As of 2007, it is exactly a century since the key turning point in the Darwin-inspired American eugenic movement."

Obama Drama

If not already, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., may soon be wishing he never wrote his memoir. First, bloggers debated his drug use, mentioned in the book, and now bloggers are seizing on a report that the presidential candidate exaggerated his achievements as a youthful activist.

The Los Angeles Times reports that as the 24-year-old mentor to public housing residents, Obama says he initiated and led efforts that thrust Altgeld's asbestos problem into the headlines, which led to a cleanup. But critics say the public housing complex Altgeld Gardens and a local newspaper, the Chicago Reporter, really deserve the credit.

Dave Wissing at The Hedgehog Report says one of his biggest pet peeves of politicians on both sides is "when they lie about seemingly basic facts that are easily verifiable to try and make themselves look better when the factual story would have been sufficient or the lie is completely unnecessary..that one wonders why they think they can get away with it."

But some bloggers say we shouldn't be reading the memoir for its historical accuracy in the first place. "A person's memoir is not a history of their times, it's an account of what they've done and the challenges they have faced," Mark Gisleson blogs at Norwegianity. "If I were to tell the story of my life, I would spend more time on my enemies than on my friends because those chapters are inherently more interesting."

Others criticize the Los Angeles Times for their report. "It seems with Barack Obama, the MSM can't modulate itself," Dan Curry blogs at Reverse Spin. "It either embarrasses itself with fawning that would make Bambi blush or it tries too hard to show it is balanced by launching a questionable attack. The Los Angeles Times today published an incredibly weak hit on Obama."

But perhaps, it's simply politics as usual. "As much as the American people like watching someone shoot into the stratosphere of fame, we almost like watching them fall from their lofty heights even more," a blogger at Daily Prez writes. "We'll, we're about to see the beginning of the attempts to put some dents in Sen. Obama's armor."

Blogophile RSS Feed