Nick@Nite had a Cosby Show marathon on last night and I caught the episode, "How Ugly Is He." I'm sure you've seen it -- I know I have at least 34021394209402340240285 times (make that 3402139420940234024028 and 6!) -- and it got me to thinking about how you really have to censor yourself around others and in public, whereas blogging is never inappropriate.

In the episode (in case you don't feel like following the links), Denise brings her boyfriend home for dinner and he turns out to have some very headstrong and contrary (to general society's) views. Of course, things get tense over dinner when the guy just can't keep his mouth shut; you know better than to bad-mouth doctors and lawyers if your girlfriend's parents happen to be a doctor and a lawyer and you're meeting them for the first time, but it obviously wouldn't have been a very interesting show if the character had.

But blogging allows you to basically do just that, and I think that's the real power and draw of it: it's not so much the anonymity as it's the appropriateness (or lack thereof). After all, if anonymity were the primary draw, blogging wouldn't be very effective; you establish a personality within your blog, even if it is not indicative of your own, true personality. And this happens even if you don't intentionally set out to do it. Bloggers want their opinions to be heard and known, but we all know that there is a place and time to discuss certain things, and that's the beauty of blogging: it's always the time and place to speak your mind and allow for feedback. You don't feel you need to constantly censor yourself or your thoughts, or even temper them just so you don't hurt someone's feelings or piss someone off.

Even within the context of a themed blog, it's never really inappropriate to go off-track -- just digress or post some completely off-topic entries now and again -- because you can never really be inappropriate in a blog. You don't have to stick to one topic; you don't have to write formally, in essay form, be grammatically correct; it's a free-verse, stream-of-consciousness conversation that doesn't have to stay within any certain boundaries. And if someone disagrees with you or doesn't like what you are saying, they can just click that X in the corner of their screen and move on to the next one, or they can leave a comment and present their own view.

Which is another great feature: whatever your topic du jour, you aren't limited in your conversation with just the people you know or talk to on a regular basis, nor the "established authorities" on the subject. Using Technorati and other blog engines, you can enter a topic and get a list of blogs and links related to whatever you're interested in. If you don't like what I have to say on the subject, but you want to discuss the topic with someone, blogs are the perfect medium! And there's no need to start and finish the conversation then and there -- if you want to take time to form your opinion into words or enter the conversation later, it's going to be there.

And even though we're not really reporters or authoritative news analysts, I've honestly come to the conclusion that I'm not getting the whole story without searching the blog engines first; knowing that Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity is just the facts -- knowing what others are saying about it is the story.

And unlike professional "reporters," bloggers don't have the resources to literally make up the news -- we just talk about it.