On attitudes, cliques and objectivity

Alternately titled, The hell with it, I will own my words;
or, You know me, never one to pass up some juicy blogfodder.
I think it's going to be interesting to see what the explanation is of the matter detailed here. The organizers of the Second Amendment Blog Bash don't think highly of the Gun Rights Examiners? How true that might be I don't know, considering I've seen the GREs' work discussed by at least one of the bloggers in question. But then one would think that if this excluded Examiner columnist wasn't telling the truth, one of said organizers would be right quick to pipe up and set the matter straight. I know if it was me I wouldn't stand for something so outrageous if it was a lie. And then there's the matter of registration for the bash being closed right after David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh registered. For all anyone knows it could be coincidental, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't. It was only a matter of time before the blogosphere developed the very same clique mentality inherent to the "Authorized Journalists," as well as the accompanying clique-ish attitudes and groupthink. And the development of said mentality was only helped along by the fact that many of those bloggers are friends in real life; I suppose that's the blogger equivalent of the "Authorized Journalists" running into each other at the same cocktail parties or whatever. Anybody who's observed human relationships for any period of time knows when that sort of thing happens it affects one's objectivity. Don't get me wrong; it's great for them that their blogs fostered meatspace friendships. My own blog opened a door for me that I'd been trying to get open for, let's just say, way the hell too long. But I surely hope no one thought that group wasn't going to develop a plan of its own and exclude or ostracize those who didn't quite agree with said plan though those who were shut out agreed with the plan's objectives. That phenomenon is just one of the failures of human organizations that we're probably never going to get around, but it doesn't make it any less appalling or counterproductive.
As for me owning my words...yeah, this was me. I just edited it a bit for this space. I was bein' a chickenshit by not signing my name to it. I don't expect any pats on the back for this; in fact, I'd expect varying degrees of disagreement with some or all of what I just said. But that's ok. Free and open discussion is a good thing.