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One year ago, this weekend, a tragedy occurred in the blogosphere, or so I am told, by the estimable Jon Swift. On that weekend, while the world was preparing to sit down to a nice quiet Superbowl Sunday, a group of influential bloggers, following the example of one Atrios of Eschaton purged their blogs’ blogrolls of links to the blogs of lesser fry, calling it, in doublespeak “Blogroll Amnesty Day.” Thousands, hundreds or perhaps tens of bloggers found themselves out in the cold, bereft of links, deprived of page rank and most importantly, short of readers.

Why does this matter? To an extremely small fry blogger such as myself it matters quite a lot. Only by gaining the favor of (links from) other, more well known blogs can I find the readership that my three starving little blogs need. Blog readers follow those links to find new blogs to read, obviously, but also Google counts them in order to “rank” the importance of a blog and place it’s posts on page one (or fifty) of a search. To a well known blogger with a few thousand readers a day? Not so much. However there was a guy who said something to the effect of “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.” The more established bloggers should be wiling to give a hand up to those who come after.

I want to acknowledge those bloggers who are participating in this weekend’s celebration of Blog Amnesty Day. In addition to Jon Swiift, reasonable conservative, there is Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, who designed that classy graphic you see at the top of this post, Drinking Liberally in New Milford, who claims to be plastered all over the internet, Kiko’s House who is celebrating with a really nice looking Parker House roll, Chuck for . . . who allegedly ran for office once, My View of “It” written by my buddy Carol, and The Art of Peace, so far.

More coming in . . . konagod, The Political Cat, The Great Endarkenment, WTF Is It Now?, Zippidy Doo Da and Three Sticks.

And still more! The Newshoggers, Publius Endures, The Grand Panjandrum, Reno and it’s Discontents, 45s And Under, Last Left Turn Before Hooterville, The Barefoot Bum, Crinch Pin, Zen Comix, American Street,Pushing Rope, The Aristocrats. The Moderate Voice, Comments From Left Field, Center Face!, The Crone Speaks, Fausta’s Blog, Brilliant at Breakfast, Bildingblog, Welcome to Pottersville.

And yet more! The Midpoint,Monkeyfister, Writes Like She Talks, The Impolitic, The Seminal, A Blog Around The ClockThe Democratic Daily.

Keep ‘em coming, folks! The Reaction, The Kenosha Kid’s Blog, Bad Attitudes, My Left Wing, The Field Negro, Play On!, Moue Magazine, Long Live The Village Green, Liberal Values, Ice Station Tango, The Mahatma X Files, Alternate Brain, SteveAudio, politickybitch, DrugMonkey (Like Deep Throat said “Follow the monkey.”), Distributorcap NY, The Osterly Times, Wrythe Safely.

A special mention to Wrythings for discovering Blogroll Amnesty Day but not reading any of the posts explaining what it is. Hey, I heard from Wrythings – he says he was trying to bring more attention to the day by making people think. I think it worked.

Not all of these blogs have the same “liberal blogroll policy,” that Mr. Swift has, giving a link back to any non offensive blog that asks, but they all recognize the importance of spreading the link love. I have put them all in my blogroll, we’ll see what happens.

Oh, did I mention my other blogs? Gosh, if I could get a couple bloggers to blogroll them, I’d be made in the shade. Everyone seems to want to link to this drivel, for some reason. I’ll Never Forget The Day I Read A Book! is where I post book reviews. Currently I am running a review of Valerie Plame Wilson’s “Fair Game.” Clark’s Picks is a “vlog” where I post selected YouTube clips showing historic moments or at least historic persons, in music. Today I posted a segment from Louis Jordan’s movie “Reet, Petite and Gone,” in which he sings the film’s theme song.

For the record, I am announcing open blogroll enrollment on all three of my blogs. Blogroll me, drop me a comment about it, and I’ll blogroll you. Caveat: If I really think your blog sucks it won’t show up, but I promise not to make fun of you. This would apply to spam, porn (I know it when I see it), hate of all kinds, and something else I can’t think of at the moment but which will occur to me when the time comes.

Why don’t you post a post on your blog about Blogroll Amnesty Day? Link up and let the good blogs roll!