First, I was poking around on the Internets yesterday and happened upon a link back to an article from Pensito Review on the website for Barbra Streisand. I am one of two gay men over 50 in the United States who is not gaga over Streisand’s music (and, perhaps not coincidentally, I have lived with the other one in unmarried bliss for 27 years). However, Barbra and I are pretty well simpatico when it comes to politics so it is a high honor — right up there the time an angry troll called us “liberal extremists” — to be included on Barbra Streisand’s “must read” articles list.

Second — okay, the comparison of Pensito Review to the BBC by reader Machupicchu on his Live Journal page was unfavorable, but what the heck. The reference is in a journal listing that is too long to quote in its entirety, so we’ll just jump in here:

It’s also way better than Pensito Review, which I removed from my friends list because it did include the entire text of each article and articles were posted far too frequently with that kind of formatting. Besides, I got tired of the editorial aspect of it; even though it’s a very liberal site, the persistent attitude of “I hate conservatives and they must be destroyed” (okay that may be a slight exaggeration) gets a little wearying. I find I much prefer the objectiveness of straight news, when it comes across as objective anyway. Most of the BBC news seems to. At the very least it’s an outsider perspective, whereas something like Pensito Review (or any of our mainstream newspapers) is not.

First, thanks for reading, Machupicchu. We recently switched to the long form of the RSS feeds because our news aggregator service, NewsTex, requires it. But to your larger point: We’re more of an opinion site than a news site and I think the BBC is fine alternative for getting news.