NAME: Ana Marie Cox AGE: 33 HOME: Washington, D.C. QUALIFICATIONS: Founding editor of the two-year-old Washington political blog Wonkette (wonkette.com) / Raised in Austin and Dallas, she started her first blog, the Antic Muse, in 2003 /Author of Dog Days, her 2006 debut novel about campaign politics.
There’s a difference between Ana Marie Cox and Wonkette. Wonkette is far more vulgar than I am. She’s like me after too many margaritas.
Wonkette was supposed to be more of a gossip site, but I am very uncomfortable with ruining people’s lives. So I make up for the lack of dirt by just talking dirty.
There is such a thing as too many jokes in a blog post, when you’re trying too hard for the funny. Shorter posts are almost always better.
Ninety percent of being a good blogger is having a good eye. You have to be a filter for your readers and pick the right items from the giant volume of information that is out there.
I think some of the most popular posts I’ve ever done are funny pictures. Which doesn’t make me feel like much of a writer.
A blogger can be a journalist and the other way around. It’s just a question of medium. What I do on Wonkette isn’t journalism. I don’t pretend to offer much new information or original reporting. But that doesn’t mean I cannot occasionally practice journalism. It’s been known to happen.
I still haven’t learned how to copyedit or spell.
I wouldn’t say that angering both liberals and conservatives is just part of the job. It is more an outcome of following your instincts. The perfect post takes a piece of news and turns it on its head in a way that highlights the absurdity of our political landscape.
The best thing I can hope for when someone reads Wonkette is that he start to think a little more critically about what is happening around him. And satire is the most powerful weapon for that.
Sometimes I do regret a post. But blogging moves so fast. You can’t hang on to that regret for very long. The best you can do is apologize if you got something wrong, correct it, and move on. It’s not a bad approach to life.
I try to shower and get dressed in the morning these days. I went through a long period of wearing my pajamas all day, and it made me feel like a loser.
Conservative bloggers are more well orchestrated and maybe more effective. But they also have the powerful advantage of being on the side that runs the country. It’s much easier for them to look effective.
Blogging is exhausting. I say it’s like hopping on one foot for two years. You eventually want to use some other muscles.
In an ideal world, we would have debates about ideas and issues, and there would be little for me to write about. But thank God we’re not in an ideal world.
