Blog Talk
By Blog Talk
Thursday, August 28, 2008; A26
DENVER, Aug. 27 -- Here in Confab City, you can't swing a messenger bag without hitting a blogger; the place is lousy with them. Hundreds are credentialed; here's one worth clicking on.
Your blog: Pam'sHouseBlend.com, born July 2004.
Your real job: IT manager at Duke University Press.
Your blogger name, and why: Pam Spaulding. "Yes, I blog under my name. Boring, right? But this is who I am. I don't blog under a handler. I don't do that. I'm Pam."
Your real name: Pam Spaulding.
Other deets:45, married (to a woman, whom she wed in Vancouver, Canada, in 2004), lives in Durham, N.C.
We're dying to know -- do you actually brew any of that hazelnut-vanilla flavored junk?
In the blog or in real life?
Both.
[Laughs.] I don't drink coffee, actually. [Laughs again.] I know, I know. That's the irony right there. [Laughs some more.] I drink tea. English Breakfast tea with half-and-half.
English B reakfast? A little uppity, don't you think?
[Laughs.] That's my favorite. But let me make this clear: I call the blog Pam's House Blend to evoke the imagery of a coffeehouse, where discussions, casual discussions, about politics, about anything, really, take place.
So you happen to a black lesbian blogger . ..
Who's also a native Southerner . . .
So you happen to be a blogger who's black, who's a lesbian and who's a native Southerner. Anything else before we go on ?
[Laughs.]
Who is your audience?
I never really think about that -- and, in a way, that's the beauty of blogging. You don't look for an audience. The audience finds you. I inhabit many universes. Sometimes it's wonderful. Sometimes it's a real pain. And in any given community I inhabit, I don't seem to be entirely in sync with them. Maybe that's what the appeal is of my blog. Maybe even though we categorize ourselves or people categorize us as "black," "lesbian," "Southerner" -- whatever -- what we experience is somehow always universal.
Isn't there conflict, though, within those universes?
Well, a lot of black bloggers don't identify with me, because I write about gay issues. When I write about race-related issues, a lot of my readers -- predominantly white, half [of them] gay, half [of them] straight -- find it hard to read. This election has really shown how uncomfortable people are when it comes to talking about race. Like, people, especially people in the mainstream media, keep talking about how this is the first post-racial election and Obama is a post-racial candidate.
Wait! That's not true?
No! No! And I just laugh hysterically when I hear it. Think about it: How can we be post-anything if we haven't gotten past talking about race? If we haven't really confronted it head-on? If we keep on getting defensive, both blacks and whites, whenever we hear something that makes us uncomfortable? There's a certain amount of self-segregation going on in both sides.
What was it like to watch Michelle Obama give her prime-time speech live?
An amazing moment is all I can say. She's the full realization of a woman, a black woman, who has risen through the ranks. She's the image of a professional black woman who, aside from Oprah, we usually don't see. The Cosbys, in effect, were not fiction. There are black families like that. My family is like that. But you rarely, rarely ever see them.
-- Jose Antonio Vargas
