The purpose of this blog is to offer my analysis of media on both the right and left (and the center, and everywhere else), including blogs and mainstream news and anything else that piques my interest.
The subject matter of this blog is primarily politics and rhetoric or related issues regarding language that I find worthy of comment.
Abut me: I am technically a poet in that I hold an MFA in Creative Writing with a specialization in poetry from San Diego State University. However, I make very little effort these days to get published as a public poet. Instead, i am most concerned with teaching composition at Medgar Evers College and College of Staten Island and doing some of the work that I plan to do in a Ph.D program in the next few years. Really, this is that work, as my Ph.D goals are to analyze rhetoric and communication in new and traditional media.
My audience is small. I don’t know yet who, if anyone, would be interested in reading my blog (or if I would have the time and wherewithal to sustain the effort needed to satisfy anyone who is interested).
Additional context
Things I know:
- Nobody cares about my blog
- I have little-to-nothing to add to the political discourse
- I’m just chewing news like countless other bloggers
- I have a lot to learn about blogs
- I have a lot to learn about politics
- I have a lot to learn about discourse
The name of this blog is a parody, but not meant to be mocking, of redstate.com, a popular conservative blog. I wanted to be gray state because it’s neither red nor blue, nor in between them. Gray is not even a color, so it’s not that I intend this blog to be centrist (purple) or marginalist (green, yellow). I want to maintain an even keel in that I intend to stay critical of all positions. I’m not here to praise Fox News or MSNBC or CNN, nor am I here to give shallow criticism of any of these organizations. The same can be said for Redstate or Daily Kos or McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden. Although I do have some opinions on which side of these binaries is “better” or generally “more reasonable,” I think the most useful contribution I can make to the blogosphere is to stay not neutral but equally opposed to all bad rhetoric and equally vigilant of all notes of interest.
