This is to some extent biting the hand that fed me, because he was the first of the biggies to link to OW and has been extremely supportive and is generally a mensch. But Kevin Drum probably gets an extra amount of crap because he has about 8 blogs that include a woman poster on his entire blogroll--and I mean, counting things like TAPPED and OW and the Corner where it's a mainly-male group blog. And he doesn't have a short blog roll. He links to at least three times as many conservative weblogs as female-written ones, and many of them aren't even any good and moreover are sites that everyone already knows about. He also has a high proportion of the old boys club weblogs that aren't very good now if they ever were. So then when he says that weblogs are an egalitarian paradise, and there can be no barriers to entry, and is completely unresponsive to points about what he could do if he thinks it's a concern--he comes off as pretty clueless. In general the big-time sites seem to feel an obligation to link to their forefathers--Mickey Kaus is one of about 9 sites Josh Marshall links to, for example-- but they don't seem to feel an obligation to promote good liberal sites that others may not have heard of. And plenty of liberal sites stilll blogroll Instapundit. Bit of a boys club. There's actually a pretty similar dynamic to law review at my school. It's a gender blind essay competition and yet it's only about 30% women, tops. And with weblogs,it's not gender blind, and people clearly tend to assume a blogger is of their gender, and maybe they tend to notice them more or less accordingly. I've mistaken plenty of guys for gals and the reverse is even more common. And I was the one who suggested hilzoy join OW, for example.