Memo to my lurkers...Thank you.

This is yet another blogging about blogging post. Blame it on summer and the slow and silly news cycle. Everyone will be linking to it, but if you missed Susan Madrak on HuffPo today, don't:

Personally, I'm embarrassed by all of us liberal blogofascists insisting on a place in the national discourse simply because we happened to be, um, right about George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, Iraq, the WMDs, the allegiances of the corporate media, the steady erosion of civil liberties, global warming, Republican incompetence, hypocrisy, greed and dishonesty, fiscal irresponsibility, the widening chasm between economic classes, and the evergrowing efforts to turn our country into a theocracy.

Not that we're big-headed about it or anything. Huh.

On topic, I've been very interested (and grateful) that a number of lurkers have come out to comment in the past few days. Thank you.

Bloggers tend to be hard on lurkers, and for certain, I would rather have three smart commenters here than three hundred hit-and-runs.

But the fact is, I am blessed with both, and then some. I was struck by OrganicGeorge's comment a couple days ago that a quarter of those attending YearlyKos were not bloggers, and did not even have Daily Kos diaries. At first, I thought, oh come on! Who are these hangers on? But then I realized, wow, they appreciate the blogosphere enough to pay money to meet the people they read. On the blogs. Wow. Just wow.

And at the Olympic Music Festival last Sunday, I got it. I'm sitting there with a few hundred other people listening to Beethoven string quartets. Yep, there were only four people playing instruments, and a few hundred listening. Would anyone rather it was the other way around? Or that everyone in the audience decided to hum along? Audiences are a good thing. If you're not getting enough comments for your egos, bloggers, just remember they're not lurking, they're listening.

So welcome, listening lurkers. Thanks for reading. Thanks for being an audience. We bloggers need you here, whether you comment or not.

Of course, if you decide to join the party, you can wear one of these: