Some of our friends in the Cities tease us about how Bluestem doesn't seem to attract the attention of the metro MSM. One acquaintance of twelve years tells us that she can't imagine why anyone would read this blog. Indeed, she's never visited our sylvan posts.
We suspect the friendship is stronger for that.
Thus, we were startled to see this in a Politics in Minnesota Weekly Report, just now posted to the PIM site:
Memetics 101: Bluestem Prairie Conquers The Media Echo Chamber
PIM staff observed an interesting media effect this week, which should interest anyone who's into 'memetics' (the trendy study area of how ideas are propagated). The CD1 blog Bluestem Prairie noticed that the new national GOP slogan "The change you deserve" is the same marketing tagline as the antidepressant drug Effexor. What's more, Effexor is produced as a red pill bearing a large 'W' (the symbol of drugmaker Wyeth Pharmaceuticals). Bluestem Prairie posted about it, and it got picked up by the Huffington Post, the New York Times''The Caucus' blog, Comedy Central's Indecision 2008 blog, and over the aisle to Michelle Malkin's site and even Rush Limbaugh. Soon enough, it was cropping up in blogs in Mississippi newspapers, and finally ascending to the tart peak of the liberal echo chamber, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann's nightly "Worst Persons in the World" rankings.
It was a good example of meme propagation (memes are reproducible ideas, understood as something like intellectual genes). Who could resist such a funny conclusion? Thus, did one discreet blog post travel through the national media.
Fortunately, since we are blessed by a face God never intended for television and a voice that cracks speakers, the rest of our methods should go undetected.
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