Blogs are not free speech. I'm not going to blog that my boss sux if I want to keep my job. I'm not going to blog that my authoritarian government needs to be brought down if I want to keep what little freedoms I have left. I'm not going to blog that my sister is the most awful person in my life if I have to see her every Thanksgiving. Erving Goffman, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, talks about the many faces we wear all the time. The blog is a public face. The blog is the equivalent of what the President of the United States says on TV from a prepared speech. The blog is propaganda, not Truth. (reblogged from my older blog here).