Well, it whizzes by pretty fast for a human, but for a new art form . . .

Or communication form . . .

I'd say it officially ended for blogland with the current dispute over Kos accepting money from Dean and other unnamed candidates while writing about them during the last election cycle--about Dean for sure; the others, who knows, hence the problem.

Two good pieces about it from our two best web sources, Salon and Slate (more or less)--Scott Rosenberg  and Chris Suellentrop, respectively.

Have you been following any of this? Man. Quite the eruption of anger, frustration and middle fingers at this pivotal moment in the blog childhood. I certainly understand it. We're essentially facing a call for new rules of some sort, more restrictions, tighter self-policing . . .

Who the hell wants that?

Well . . .

I blog, addictively. I've tried to quit several times, but I just enjoy it too much. I love the freedom I have there -- express myself a lot more loosely than I would in a magazine or newspaper (and in my case, lazily; I don't even proofread for typos there.)

So the last thing I really want is rules. Except . . .

Except come on. Nobody gets away with a blissfully stringless world where can jaunt about all day gushing out art and opinions with never a question raised about the man, woman, family or corporation(s) quietly supplying the money to feed, house and entertain you. Not if you want an audience to actually consume your work.

Even if you're Pablo Picasso, if you were accepting large sums from some predecessor to Amnesty International for six months before you painted Guernica, you can bet you'd have a lot of 'splaining to do. Your admirers and detractors would still be arguing about it 50 years later. With good reason.

It's not pleasant. It's nicer to answer to no one. And for awhile, we could. Blogs were so new, so fragmented, so inconsequential to the larger culture at first, we could do anything we wanted. Infants get away with anything.

But the minute we started having a real impact, we should have seen those days were numbered. Once you DO matter, you enter a vastly different arena, and the rules really are different. I'm certainly not suggesting the same rules as journalists--I love my blog freedom, and I'm not ready to adhere to all the rules of journalism there, but it would be silly an irresponsible to presume that I don't have any rules to live by.

I understand the urge for people like Kos to lift their middle finger. But he’s a smart man, smart enough that he’ll be embarrassed by that response one day.

For the period in question, I think disclosure of the Dean money was fine. I remember thinking about it at the time, and thinking that we’re all muddling along here, he’s putting tremendous time into this blog, and he needs the freedom to pursue an income and pursue this blog. And he’s being up-front about it, so fine.

(Though my inclination is also to agree with Chris Suellentrop that Kos was wrong in refusing to disclose which other candidates he worked for, even while setting up funding drives to support certain candidates. )

But that was 2003-2004. The blogworld changed fast. He ended that election cycle a completely different force than he began it. It would be way, way, way irresponsible to do it in again in 2008, or even 2006.

He did nothing wrong taking money from Dean. But that doesn’t me, he, you, me, or anyone else can get live by those rules in the future.

In Kos' case--or the case of any blog that wants to be taken remotely seriously in the political realm--that means no money from politicians. That's a no-brainer. (I won't repeat those arguments. Check out the Slate piece or any number of others if it seems kind of brainerish to you.)

Other blogs, other choices. We're all starting to face them.

It was never money for me, because nobody ever offered me money for my blog services. The toughest one for me involves my personal life: how much of sordid details can reveal and still be respected as a journalist? But that's a restriction imposed from the other direction. A better example for this discussion is my ability to discuss other artists, writers, reality-show contestants . . . I assumed I could trash anybody out there who I thought deserved it. I was just a speck out in the great void, it's not like I was going to offend them personally.

Then I got an email from a writer asking why I had written about her work so mercilessly. Man. I felt like crap. Never expected her to read it. And when I went back and reread it, I had been pretty careless in dismissing her anyway. It was more a disagreement in taste.

That was the first of tough lessons for me that what I write there can have consequences. Which imposes responsibilities on me, whether I want to acknowledge them or not. I can decide which ones I'm willing to accept, but they're still there.

It seems a little silly that I had to learn that one. I've been a journo for years, and of course I know I have to think through my critique very carefully if I "published" it. But the blog was supposed to be different. I could act a lot looser there, just share my opinions as I might hanging out with a group of friends. Salon was big enough to get noticed, my blog was just a speck, so I could say whatever I wanted.

Not in the age of google. And not with the amount of effort I was putting into the blog at that time. The more energy I devoted to it, the higher my google rank rose, and the more likely people I was writing about would stumble upon themselves there.

Welcome to responsibilityland. Of course I still had the constitutional right to trash anybody I felt like, but I could no longer do it in blissful ignorance that it would never hurt anyone.

I imposed a new set of rules on myself. But I get lots of exceptions. Reality-show contestants, for one. The way I see it, the whole reason for their television existence lies in chiefly in our ability to have fun with them: to pick the ones we like and dislike, the ones we admire and the ones that drive us freaking nuts! That’s what they’re there for, they know that, they buy into that by participating, so they’re really fair game.

(Unlike, say politicians or actors or any forms of artists. Most of them are there for politics or art, and their fame is a byproduct--integral to their reach, but not the goal in itself. Different set of rules, in my book.)

Reality contestants are an easy exception. The rest of my rules get kind of fuzzy sometimes. I'm still working them out, but I've got a pretty good idea in most cases, and I still feel comfy acting a lot looser here than I would "in print." We'll see how long that lasts. Or whether I regret it.

But nothing is nearly as loose as the day I first signed up for this blog 2.5 years ago.

Childhood is over friends. Hope you got in on the fun while we were still kids. Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. I know I did.