Different circus, same clowns

(Greek liberal political blogger, Panayotis Vryonis, runs Vrypan.net. Like most foreigners, Panayoti has an incredibly cool, advanced camera/phone/GPS/video/voice recorder that is lighter than a feather and fits in your pocket. The camera is 5 megapixels. The GPS is free. I am so sick of going abroad and seeing phones that are generations beyond anything we have here. I'm suspecting that our wonderful domestic-spying friends at the American phone companies are restraining trade in some way. It's really pathetic how backwards we are in some things.)

When I was in Greece two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet with the chief of staff to Greek opposition leader George Papandreou. They were preparing for national elections held this past Sunday (the left lost). I got to meet with a number of senior media staffers, including their blogger, and it was surprising to what degree the Greek blogosphere reflects our own. Certainly, the US blogosphere, and especially political blogosphere, beats out most (if not all) countries in the world in terms of its size and import in national (and local) politics. But what I found funny, and interesting, were a few key points.

1. The liberal political blogosphere in Greece is more powerful than the conservative blogosphere.

2. Liberal blogs, while anti-conservative, don't necessarily identify with a particular party, or at least with the lead liberal party, PASOK. In other words, the liberal bloggers can be a bit bitchy with their own party (those are my words).

The funny thing is how closely this mirrors the US. The liberal American political blogosphere is more powerful than the conservative. When the media and politicians talk about "the blogs" they're using talking about us - about Markos, about Atrios, about Arianna. They're not talking about Michelle, Hugh and John. Whether this is because conservatives prefer talk radio as their unifying outlet, or the fact that liberals are more independent-spirited, something that lends itself to the Internet and political innovation, who knows.

The second, and even funnier thing, in my view, is that the left is often a bit critical of its own lead party. Sound familiar?

Greece only has 25% of its citizens online, or so I was told. While in the US, over half the population has broadband Internet access (e.g., cable or DSL). But there's still a lot you can do by organizing a key cabal of supporters, who then disseminate your message to the offline community. It's what many of us had to do in the late 90s in the US. With email lists of only a few thousand people, and Web sites that only got a few thousands visitors a day, we still wreaked havoc. And France was way behind in terms of blogs, and even its online presence wasn't quite up to the European par years ago. France now leads Europe in its blog presence.