Just in time for BAD

The three days of this weekend (i.e., Fri-Sun) are the somewhat misnamed Blogroll Amnesty Day, when small bloggers give a nod to other small bloggers that they think deserve wider notice.

To understand why I've not been promoting it, you need to know the background and my own opinion on that. BAD got started a couple of years ago when a few of the "big" bloggers decided they were going to cut their blogrolls and so chucked off a number of smaller, lesser-known blogs. They called it "blogroll amnesty" on the idea that they were not going to feel guilty about it.

There were howls of protest, primarily from those affected by the loss of links, who more or less argued that the big blogs had some kind of moral duty to provide links to smaller blogs, even as those link lists got to be hundreds of items long, which to me makes them pretty useless. I had a hard time feeling offended; my attitude was "It's his/her blog, they can do whatever they damn well please with it." I also had trouble conceiving of Skippy, one of the loudest denouncers, as having a "small" blog considering that over the course of its lifetime it has averaged nearly 1000 hits a day.

Still and be all that as it may, the idea of smaller bloggers supporting each other is a good one. I know from experience, as I know you have, that there is a lot of talent and insight out there that doesn't get due notice. (Plus, there is my contention - I am speaking here of political blogs - that a number of the big blogs are not big because they are better, indeed, often, to be blunt, they are not, but merely because they were among the first and so got established before many others appeared on the scene .)

So I do want to point up a couple of blogs I think deserve notice. They are all taken from my blog list to the right (minus the "big" or at least bigger ones), so no big surprises, but since, as it says right there, "Beyond the reciprocal links, my blog list is pretty much limited to blogs I actually do look at on at least a fairly regular basis," I can claim familiarity with each of my selections. Most people seem to be picking about five for their list, so I'll so the same.

Blckdgrd
Daisy's Dead Air
Jobsanger
Notes From Underground
The Existentialist Cowboy

Of course, now I feel like it'll seem I'm dissing the others on my link list that I didn't mention. Which I'm not, I'm just.... Oh the heck with it, I refuse to feel guilty about my choices. Amnesty!

Footnote: Damn! Forgot one I meant to include because I haven't gotten around to adding it to the sidebar.

Pruning Shears