Leave it to an overwhelming work schedule over the past few months to get me totally out of the blog-reading (and blog-posting) groove. One result is that I totally missed the (to me) shocking act of Amanda Marcotte's throwing her keyboard behind the campaign of John Edwards.

Shocking, to me, because she is one of the most powerful political writers, period, and I guess I saw bloggers as more like opinion journalists -- apart from the fray in order to comment upon it. Maybe I'm just too jaded about the entire political field right now to imagine picking a horse right now. (Creative Destruction does some creative destruction of Amanda's views, wondering [I posit charitably] how her views can fit the sanitized requirements of political candidates.)

(I confess that part of my shock also arises out of my sense that Edwards is too much the smoothie politician for his own good. He just sounds like a politician. It's that disease that most Democrats seem to have these days: dive right into bullet-point plans, without clearly articulating the overarching vision. Despite is immoveable hair and Tom Cruise grin, I do find Edwards to have a compelling presence, once you actually listen. And he is pretty much the only candidate who's unequivocally against Bush's war.)

My proverbial hat's off to Amanda for her bold move. I can't find it in myself to criticize someone for actually trying to do something to help effect change. I find myself wondering, however, whether she will actually have as much influence as an official blogger for the Edwards campaign as opposed to the star of one of the most popular and successful political blogs.

Melinda Casino senses that this all could lead to trouble, and points to some eloquent posts on different "sides" of the subject. Next thing we'll have bloggers taking people off of their blogrolls over politics.

Oh, wait. That's not new.

I wonder if anything is changing much, really. If there is a trend here, I can only see it as being positive. One of my peeves over the past several years is that many bloggers have pretended to be neutral, or at least un-influenced, about one candidate or another, while quietly working on the payroll of one campaign or another.

Why shouldn't bloggers fly their colors? It sure beats the ethics of undisclosed free laptops and travel junkets.

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media girl also blogs at other places.