Black-and-white issues make better sound bytes

There is a developmental trajectory of political awakening that starts with awareness of large, simple, black-and-white caricatures in which only the other is culpable, and morphs into a more nuanced awareness of shades of grey and the sometimes painful recognition that we ourselves are also implicated.

Sound bytes come readily from the black-and-white newbies. Maybe blogs allow enough space to explore the nuances. But I suspect we will always hear more from people at the comfortable stage of newly discovering how bad everyone else is. Which is not to say they are necessarily in the majority.

I think especially of feminism and gender politics in this regard, but I'm sure it is true more broadly.