My first thought when viewing this blog was, “Here we go again, another right wing political blogger!” A quick scan of this blog would bring me the now infamous “Red & Blue States Map,” and several Bush/Cheney graphics. The posts are contained in a simple Blogger template. The fonts and layout was easy to read, a few customizations, and lots of right wing links. Being a neutral reviewer I promised myself to act like Switzerland when reviewing this blog.
Leaning Right lists itself as a News/Links blog and that is very much what it is. Tony Mc, the author, only writes about 25% of the content of the blog. Much of that is him saying “Have a Right Day,” when signing off on his posts. I followed several political blogs this election season and Leaning Right is a carbon copy of so many of them already out there. It seems as though the author just regurgitates news stories that he read though out the day onto his blog. He does do a few commentaries on comments he receives or articles he read in which it was nice to read his personal opinions. I am always interested on what makes someone Right or Left. Who isn’t?
For someone who seems to be new to blogging Tony has all the basics covered. An easy to read template, a guestbook, and a counter are the first steps to creating any good blog. Unfortunately for right now at least Tony’s blog is just that, good. Due to the fact that there are just so many political blogs one has to do something different or original to make their blog great. To make his blog stand out Tony could tweak his template a bit, get more personal and not rely so much on links. He needs to attempt to find a nitch that hasn’t yet been found in the world of political blogs. However, if Tony simply wants to share the stories he finds interesting with his readers and sometimes make a comment on them he is doing that just fine.
Leaning Right is the same old same old when it comes to a blog on someone’s personal political agenda. It is very much, “this is how I feel so you should too.” If you like politics and you were for Bush in the 2004 election this blog may be for you. The only problem is that everything written, linked to, or reposted is probably something that you have seen before somewhere else. Tony Mc is getting the word out. He is blogging about his views and other online information that reflect his views or prove why the rest of the world should have his views. The problem is that an old brown sweater will always be an old brown sweater. Sure it’s comfortable and we wear it all the time, but after awhile it just sort of blends in with all the other brown sweaters. If Tony wants more readers he is going to have to sprinkle some glitter on both the right and left sleeves of that old brown sweater. If it stays the same it will just fade into the blog graveyard.