Finding that First Post

You may be able to find the first post to the Ho-Ho-Kus Cogitator blog at: http://hohokuscogitator.blogspot.com/ and today I know a little more about blogging than I did in June 2005 when I wrote it. A blog requires more than just an occasional hitting of the right keys if the blogger has any hope that someone (or two) will eventually read it.

It's the same with any writing for although a writer may get published and receive payment for her or his work, there's no guarantee that anyone will read it, let alone understand the point(s) the writer is trying to make. There's even a fainter chance that a reader will be motivated to seriously cogitate about the subject, let alone take any action.
Sometimes the reader totally misinterprets what has been written so that all of the writer's research, writing, editing and rewriting is wasted.

During the 1968 Presidential campaign, I worked on Senator Eugene McCarthy’s campaign in Northern New Jersey. President Lyndon Baines Johnson eliminated himself from attempting to be re-elected when he saw that support for "his" Vietnam War was rapidly eroding. Robert Kennedy belatedly jumped into the fray and was violently eliminated in a Los Angeles hotel by Sirhan Sirhan. LBJ threw his support to his vice-president Hubert Horatio Humphrey, a former liberal who was beholden to his boss for any small favor.

LBJ sent HHH to Cleveland’s inner city Hough neighborhood where riots had occurred two years earlier, to speak about federal funding of programs in the area. The media coverage gave the impression that Hubert alone was responsible for helping the people of Hough and showed him in front of a crowd presenting the funding check.

As a McCarthy supporter, I wrote to the letters-to-the-editor section of my local newspaper. In it I castigated Humphrey and the Johnson administration for attempting to buy Ohio votes by sending the vice-president.

After the letter ran, a very conservative reader wrote the newspaper and in his letter he profusely thanked me for exposing the corrupt, radical, far-left, money tossing, welfare-promoting Johnson administration for their actions.

No writing is ever guaranteed to present the message the writer intended, but we still have to keep on trying as long as there is someone out there willing to read it. Is there anyone out there?