OK, here’s a blog post about a blog post, about a…well, you get it.

The issue: Bob Lutz is the vice chairman of product development at General Motors and the chairman of GM North America. He is also one of the most prominent Fortune 500 bloggers, as he’s the leader of several contributors to GM’s Fastlane blog. Apparently he was really busy during the past couple of weeks. He didn’t post anything on his blog during that time, and some bloggers who keep a close eye on GM thought this was the beginning of the end of Lutz’s interest in blogging.

The squeaky wheel got the grease: Lutz took a couple of minutes away from his day job at one of the world’s largest auto manufacturers — dealing with global supply chains, Al Gore’s global warming alarms, and $3.50 a gallon gas prices — to remind his friendly blogosphere colleagues that, in fact, he is not bored with blogging. He’s just been tending to a few more urgent and important issues.

Now, I’m as big an advocate for new PR techniques as other folks on the social media circuit, but these kind of situations can make some execs say, “Hey, I don’t need the aggravation of blogging.” Part of me says the blogosphere can seem like the tail wagging the dog, that it’s excellent in some cases and a major distraction for many others.

Lutz’s retort was wrapped in a larger blog post, so kudos for the way he handled it. And when I get a bit cynical about the usefulness of blogs for corporations, I give Shel Holtz a read to level set on the issue. His writing about the Lutz situation inspired this post today.

My mom said, if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything. In the world of social media, I’ve taken that little maxim just one step further: If you don’t have anything worthwhile to say, listen for a while. I mean, the blogosphere shouldn’t penalize those who put quality before quantity and avoid posting just for the sake of saying something. That “something” too often ends up “nothing,” anyway.

Dozens of times I think, I’d like to post about this or that, but usually a child’s homework, a soccer game, work, driving kids around, basketball practice, workout, or a rare quiet dinner with my wife takes precedence. It’s just that simple, and because of those priorities, it seems odd that a blogger — especially one like Bob Lutz — should take flak. So again, Shel is right in this case: The unfortunate solution is to just get thicker skin and keep the faith.

In the end, there are more positives than negatives to the pursuit of blogging. Just ask Bob Lutz.