Lack of diversity afflicts the right more than the left, IMO. The Kos crowd is a very specific element of the left, and in general further to the left than I am – depending on how far back you go with this blog, there’s a reader I won’t name who wanted the Progressive Women’s Blog ring to remove me from their list because the reader doesn’t think I’m progressive enough. And yet I originally was going to be one of the main contributors to As Ohio Goes, which is also generally more left of my ideas.

Maybe the people along the center to left spectrum just speak up more, but I really don’t witness all that much coming out of a variety of points along the center to right spectrum. I would be happy to be corrected.

And that’s part of the problem – if such people/minds/beliefs exist on the center to right spectrum, how is it that they feel they either don’t want to voice their position, can’t voice it – or what? Why squelch the fact that there is diversity? Would you argue that they think they’re being served just fine? I really am not well-studied on how that’s argued.

My fundamental point was that “a lack of diversity” is not exclusively a conservative problem. (Or maybe that “progressives” aren’t necessarily all that progressive.)

FWIW, I also just noticed that my Washington Post quote includes a dangling participle. My fifth-grade teacher would not have been amused.

http://www.nixguy.com/?p=2802

I also blogged about women at Kos a couple of days ago. Or the wariness about how it might go for women there, I should say.

OK, I just can’t resist.

In today’s Washington Post there’s an article titled “A Diversity of Opinion, if Not Opinionators: At the Yearly Kos Bloggers’ Convention, a Sea of Middle-Aged White Males.” To quote from the article:

Walking around McCormick Place during the weekend, it became clear that only a handful of the 1,500 conventioneers — bloggers, policy experts, party activists — are African American, Latino or Asian. Of about 100 scheduled panels and workshops, less than a half-dozen dealt directly with women or minority issues.

How can this possibly be at a convention of progressives?!? (VSAS: TBA)

Stephen Metcalfe’s review might also be a must-read for “righties.” One conservative, John Podhoretz, describes Metcalf’s review as “startlingly vicious.” Another, Stanley Kurtz, characterizes it as “the usual hack-job tactic of assembling isolated quotes and casting them in the worst possible light.” (I’m a lot less exercised; I’d just call the review “unsurprising.”)

BTW, readers may notice that both of the links I’ve referenced are to The Corner, a group blog for the conservative magazine, National Review. Some progressives might even find The Corner and associated blogs interesting. (Markos (Kos) Moulitsas is quoted as saying, “I do like the blogs at the National Review — I do think their writers are the best in the [conservative] blogosphere.”)

For those for whom it matters, The Corner’s editor is a woman (Kathryn Jean Lopez).

“And, in addition to these and other motives, nearly all the authors represented were provoked into conservatism by the rigid political correctness they found in academia.”

We don’t exactly have demographic profiles of conservatives vs. liberals, but we do of Republicans vs. Democrats. I find it interesting that Republicans are more likely to be among the college-educated than Democrats, even though college professors, themselves are much more likely to be Democrats than Republicans.