Endorsement overkill

In 1984, I earned my bachelor's degree in journalism and political science. That second major instilled in me only two things: a deep-seated suspicion of all politicians, and an equally deep-seated desire to avoid friends-and-family conversations about politics in favor of doing my own homework and making up my own mind.

The Internet, circa 2008, makes that desire almost impossible to fulfill, worse even than four years ago, the last time I brought this up.

Facebook and Twitter friends will make their political views known within far too many of their status updates. Bloggers who, most of the time, focus on one useful specialty subject or another will change course in election season to splay their political views.

I will fight for anyone's right to express an opinion using all available tools, including a blog or a tweet. But I do not actively seek out blogs for political opinions. Instead, I fill my feed reader with sites whose value propositions are distinctly utilitarian and nonpolitical: covering the media business, for example, or technology, or innovation, or the search business.

When a non-political-specialty blogger diverts from such a value proposition to endorse or advocate a candidate, at face value it bugs me -- especially if the blogger makes no effort to tie the advocacy to his or her particular area of coverage or expertise.

At least most bloggers make no secret of their purpose to express opinions. Endorsing in that framework sits better with me than a site that feigns unbiased coverage of an industry, but routinely serves articles with thinly veiled political messages and only tangential connections to its industry. Know any sites like that? I do.

In these situations, political commentary usurps the privilege of my attention, like a bait-and-switch.

Even social media status messages with political tones make me queasy. Staying away from politics remains a fine strategy for keeping friends, I find.

As such, to be clear: I won't tweet who I voted for (love that early voting!) or why. And I don't talk about politics here. I do talk about media, technology, interactive business strategy and how they all tie to customer experience. I might sometimes stray to other personal or offbeat topics, but not politics. If you see otherwise, call me on it.