Badlands Blue Commits Ptolemaic Error

The suggestively synecdochal* Badlands Blue has staked a claim to the center of the South Dakota Blogosphere. In its incautious gloating (and thank you, PP, for the immense service of preserving this valuable hubristic artifact), Badlands Blue takes credit for, among other things, people bothering to read South Dakota blogs. In its list of "Winners"** from its anti-Kirby stalking campaign, Badlands Blue includes the following:

South Dakota political blogosphere, which got a nice bump in traffic — as well as mention in the “mainstream” media — over the past few weeks. We’ll see if that continues. [Lowell Feld, "Steve Kirby's Decision Not to Run: Winners and Losers List," Badlands Blue, 2008.03.10; archived at Dakota War College]

Hate to break it to you, Ptolemy, but the sun doesn't revolve around Virginia. The Madville Times has enjoyed a steady increase in traffic since the beginning of 2008. In the past two weeks, it's my education posts that have been drawing the msot significant increase in traffic, plus an interesting blip of Google searches on Obama and South Dakota. And if I'm getting any extra attention from the Feld-Jarding-Johnson campaign to intimidate Kirby, it's mostly from people who say they're disgusted with the tactics and less inclined to vote for Johnson in November.

But we've come to expect illusions from a Virginia/DC blog that claims to be from South Dakota.

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*You can ask Jon Lauck what that means. The suggestive part: a guy from Virginia is hired to write a blog about South Dakota. Does he name it Prairie Blue? Coteau du Prairie Blue? Big Mo Blue? Black Hills Blue? Slim Buttes Blue? Of all the regions he could choose to represent a state he hadn't visited before, he picks the Badlands as the most representative feature of our state. Hmmm....

**"Winners"? Fred Thomspon's right on this one.