Nevertheless, what a terrific entry! Loved the inclusion of relevant URLs and background information. Keeps the reader engaged!

Thank you, Deaf Pundit for pointing out the RLM impersonator. I truly appreciate it very much.

I have much respect for Glenn Lockhart as a person. I would never resort to such demeaning language to deflate someone like Glenn Lockhart.

I have to report my so-called RLM blog postings to Shane Feldman and find out the IP address. Thanks again to the Deaf Pundit!

Robert L. Mason (Real RLM!)

I remember seeing you and your wife. Really funny of you when you denied it three months ago. Frederick Heibard was well known for declaring to world that he was unmarried when he had a wife for 17 years. That occurred in Bavaria (Germany) in 18th century.

I enjoy this blog. You are good at making poignant blogs that make me think twice. Of course, I never rely on bloggers on the view of blogs anyway.

I read internet from time to time.

Why you have to label blogs and assume things about them? Too many people feel they must label things. Most important of all is enjoying to read blogs.

I know you like to read when we were Gallaudet students. We had good talks on VAX. It is really shame of Irving to close VAX. Maybe Davila will bring it back to life. I wrote a letter to him but have not hear back yet.

Robert L. Mason (RLM)

Although I had hoped you guys out there would post personally on specific deaf blogs in relation to any of the four theories, this has been fun just the same. TGIF and thanks.

You know, it’s not just media that’s being impacted by the little guy. Research will soon have to follow. How much research, for example, makes a big thing of how “hard of hearing” people feel “stuck in the middle” between “the Hearing World” and “Deaf Culture?” Even the most preliminary glance at these blogs/responses will show that’s WAY too simplistic of a worldview. There are all kinds of people in here who don’t consider themselves culturally deaf, but they DO consider themselves biologically deaf, and not hard-of-hearing. Furthermore, I wonder how many would say they feel “stuck between” as opposed to saying “No, I feel comfortable in the middle.”

Blogs are the future. They’re the best qualitative data analysis anyone’s going to find out there.

Not entirely contributory to your thread but here we see Erin Casler talk about her own blogging why’s, and some of her stuff and public comments are very relevant. We might not know why teens have MySpace, but at least we know a little bit more about why we blog. And for a possibly humorous parallel, maybe the older folks think of us adult bloggers the same we think of MySpacers? It’s all uses and gratifications.

“In this day and age, what’s truly neutral?… not only in terms of what eventually makes publication, but also in terms of letters to the editor that they won’t let through,” could have been said 50 years ago, and in fact was. That was the gist of the finding of the original gatekeeping study, way back in 1949.

“Ever since the war with Iraq began it became impossible to get the full story on anything from American newspapers.” That’s the basis of gatekeeping, which essentially says we never get the whole story. Not just since the war with Iraq, but since always. Recourse? The “little guy,” as you put it. Blogs enable us to let more information through.

“…for two different reasons… one, they usually only print the bad news, and two, they don’t print the really horrible stuff that harms America’s image.” That bad news is the only news getting play goes to institutional bias inherent in gatekeeping (they have a profit motive and know bad news elicits the most consumer interest). As for underreporting the really horrible news, that’s tricky. The media are the symbolic fourth estate, separate from the three branches of government, but when covering war they’re embedded, and have to be compliant with protocol and national security measures, and the fourth estate is exposed as a myth. The media works in subjugation, and not as a watchdog. There’s also the technical aspect…. reporting is difficult work. Imagine ourselves trying to report on war. I just don’t see how reporters can get it right until years later, when they’re at last able to access declassified records and pry quotes out of soldiers, who likely have become discharged vets by then. So, the media aren’t the only culprit in our failure to get the truth. Also complicit is the government, by and for us.

But McCain says differently, a man can go grocery shopping! What to do? Go to a “little guy” in Iraq, of course. See him tell off the dinosaur… I mean president hopeful. http://raedinthemiddle.blogspo.....-john.html