The Land of Ozz

I did get a trackback and I am excited. It was not the most positive trackback on the planet, but it was a trackback. The blogger (Joseph Weisenthal) was rather critical in using me as an example of what he thinks blogs should not be. He has a right to voice his opinion and he expresses it very well. I do not agree with everything he says, but he will make my blogroll just for giving me my first trackback. Here are a few things he said about me in his posting and what I have to say in response:

Unfortunately a lot of bloggers at the long-end of the blogtail instead of differentiating themselves, and making something unique, do their best to imitate their blogfathers. Like this guy Hank Osborne.

Response: I am not trying to imitate, but I am hoping like a bunch of other nobodies to get noticed by a more popular blogger. Look at one of the "blogfathers" Glenn Reynolds. His blog site the InstanPundit consists mainly of postings that are 12 words or less with a link to someone else. I don't see a problem with this type of posting, but I am criticized for not being original. Don't get me wrong, Glenn Reynolds is far from unorignal, but most of his posts have little meat to them. I hope that Glenn Reynolds or one of the other "blogfathers" reads their trackbacks one day and realizes that I post relative information from time to time. Maybe one of them will throw me a bone. Maybe I am dreaming, but it is my dream and I have a right to it. I do know that Glenn Reynolds was writing long before he started blogging, and I will be blogging long before if ever I write professionally. I have got to start somewhere. Oh yeah, this is not where I started. I started with Caden's Page before I even knew that the term blog existed. I had written over 20,00 words before I ever realized I was blogging. I started converting over to a more formal blog format a few months ago. Now here I am getting recognized/criticized. I never claimed to popular in he things I have been involved in, but rather well known. I guess bad reviews is better than no reviews for now.

Mr. Osborne averages 40 hits a day, and I suspect about 50% come from himself. If you scroll back throuh his "Details" section on the sitemeter, you see an inordinate number of hits from bellsouth.net, which I suspect is his own computer.

Response: I have been exposed. I do look at my own blog for a number of reasons. Joseph didn't look very hard at the details though. The image below is from my site meter statistics. Maybe he could not access the details or he was just not very thorough. Anyway, it shows only 15% coming form BellSouth. Oh yeah, he pegged me on that too. I do use BellSouth and so does my wife along with just a few other people I am sure. My wife looks at what I post on Caden's Page. We both get a ton of support from the emails that we receive from the several dozen repeat visitors to this blog. Most are brought in via an email subscription that allows them to get notified when I post an update to Caden's Page. By the way, the 15% BellSouth traffic really is not all my wife and me. Our traffic accounts for approximately 8% of the total traffic to www.hoei.com and www.hankosborne.com. Right now both hoei.com and hankosborne.com live on the same server. I will move www.hankosborne.com later.

MSM MSM MSM, come on guy. Dude, your readers are reading all the big blogs too you know, where they are force fed this MSMeme down their throats. Does the blogosphere really need more of this? Isn't this a waste?

Response: Yes the blogshpere does need more of this. Why? Because believe it or not there are people who read my site that may have never heard of Glenn Reynolds, Black Five, or Michelle Malkin. And yes, my views may echo some of the same things that others on the Internet say, but I did not learn those feeling here. I have been less than pleased with MSM reporting practices of bias news reporting for over a decade which is a heck of a lot longer than any of these blogs have been around. There is always another side to a story and the MSM generally in my opinion tends to track to the liberal side of most issues. That is not an original thought, but the MSM continues to deny that there are masses of people like me who believe this way. I live in a fairly conservative area of the country. I have spent about half of my adult life in or working for the military. These two groups in particular get a pretty bad wrap from the MSM. You don't have to look past the first page of most major newspapers to see this trend these days. How many articles make the front page or cover of the LA Times, NY Times, or Newsweek where the members of the military are getting praised for their service no matter who sent them or why they were to sent their current post? Not very many compared to the negative stuff. Since when does the economics of making the sell need to over power the whole truth and the morals of doing the right thing? This is not what our children need to be learning, but it continues to be what is getting shoved down our throats by mediums (TV news, print news, and Hollywood) that we have absolutely no control over if we dare turn on our TV or step foot into the checkout isle in a grocery store.

Is this a waste of time? Absolutely not! If there are members of the MSM who believe that there are just isolated pockets of people like me, then they are wrong. Why do I echo my blogfathers? There are people who like to go to someone they trust to lead them to more credible information. I beleive I have access to people that others do not. I will continue to lead my friends and fans to the stories that I feel display more of the truth. There are plenty of people like me who are fed up with masses of filth and half truths that the MSM pushes on us every single day. I have a voice and here is a place where I can speak out. I will continue to do so no matter how insignificant or redundant my critics find me to be.


You can read the full story that Joseph Weisenthal wrote here. Thanks again to Mr. Weisenthal for the trackback.

Stay tuned. More to come...