Blonde Blowhard Blog-Slagger Flip-Flops; Slobbered Over Right Blogs, Now Slags Blogs Left

Chubby buxom blonde Bushist blowhard "columnist" Kathleen Parker's panties revealed to be in major twist re nasty snarky blogtopian bloggerseses.

Here, Kathy warns regular people (who would be those upon whom the NSA is currently spying?)

"to beware and resist the ego-gratifying pack that contributes only snark, sass and destruction."

"Snark, sass, destruction": oh MY!

This Southern blonde bombshell buxom-version clone of civil Ann Coulter decries "the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility--the angry offspring of narcissism's quickie marriage to instant gratification."

Hunh?

Kathy sucks up to the Media Whore Media for a coupla paragraphs, God knows why, ranting on:

Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow. Some bloggers do their own reporting, but most rely on mainstream reporters to do the heavy lifting. Some bloggers also offer superb commentary, but most babble, buzz and blurt like caffeinated adolescents competing for the Ritalin generation's inevitable senior superlative: Most Obsessive-Compulsive.

Even so, they hold the same megaphone as the adults and enjoy perceived credibility owing to membership in the larger world of blog grown-ups. These effete and often clever baby "bloggies" are rich in time and toys but bereft of adult supervision.

Spoiled and undisciplined, they have grabbed the mike and seized the stage, a privilege granted not by years in the trenches, but by virtue of a three-pronged plug and the miracle of WiFi. They play tag team with hyperlinks ("I'll say you're important if you'll say I'm important") and shriek "Gotcha!" when they catch some weary wage earner in a mistake or oversight. Plenty smart but lacking in wisdom, they possess the power of a forum, but neither the maturity nor humility that years of experience impose.

Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure.

What Golding demonstrated--and what we're witnessing as the Blogosphere's offspring multiply--is that people tend to abuse power when it is unearned and will bring down others to enhance themselves. Likewise, many bloggers seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement. When a mainstream journalist stumbles, they pile on like so many savages, hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding's children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow. . .

I mean no disrespect to the many brilliant people out there--professors, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, scientists and other journalists who also happen to blog. Again, they know who they are. But we should beware and resist the rest of the ego-gratifying rabble who contribute only snark, sass and destruction.

We can't silence them, but for civilization's sake--and the integrity of information by which we all live or die--we can and should ignore them.

So, Kathy, where's all this weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth comin' from, Kathy honey? Some bad ol' blogger deal you some big-time snark?

What became of the blog-lovin' Kathy Parker of 2003, here?

If not for blogs, Howell Raines might still be editor of The New York Times; Trent Lott might still be majority leader of the U.S. Senate. . . I'm not an expert on blogging, but I am a fan. As a regular visitor to a dozen or so news and opinion blogs, I'm riveted by the implications for my profession. Bloggers are making life interesting for reluctant mainstreamers like myself and for the public, whose access to information until now has been relatively controlled by traditional media.

I say "reluctant mainstreamer" because what I once loved about journalism went missing some time ago and seems to have resurfaced as the driving force of the blogosphere: a high-spirited, irreverent, swashbuckling, lances-to-the-ready assault on the status quo. While mainstream journalists are tucked inside their newsroom cubicles deciphering management's latest "tidy desk" memo, bloggers are building bonfires and handing out virtual leaflets along America's Information Highway.

In some areas, bloggers are beating the knickers off mainstream reporters and commentators. Bloggers are credited, for instance, with ramping up interest in Trent Lott's suicidal praise of Strom Thurmond's segregationist history. Bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, former editor-in-chief of The New Republic magazine and author of www.andrewsullivan.com , was riding herd on Raines and The New York Times long before Jayson Blair became synonymous with criminal journalism. He was insisting on Raines' dismissal while everyone else was tapping the snooze button.

And of course Matt Drudge of www.DrudgeReport.com escorted Monica Lewinsky onto the stage.

During the Iraq war, "warbloggers" often posted new developments far ahead of the mainstream. Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online, slept maybe 4.5 hours the entire three weeks as she posted on the site's group blog, "The Corner." Put it this way, as you were waking up, Lopez was on her third Diet Coke.

The best bloggers, who are generous in linking to one another [wait, wait, in the other article, Kathy doesn't like this!} - -alien behavior to journalists accustomed to careerist, shark-tank newsrooms - - are like smart, hip gunslingers come to make trouble for the local good ol' boys. The heat they pack includes an arsenal of intellectual artillery, crisp prose, sharp insights and a gimlet eye for mainstream media's flaws [manly blogs! yee-haw!]

Glenn Reynolds, the blogosphere's Rowdy Yates (www.Instapundit.com ), as well as a University of Tennessee law professor, last year wrote, "Big journalism is in trouble," and proclaimed "the end of the power of Big Media."

He's right about the trouble part, but the blogosphere may help more than hurt. The view from my bunker suggests that blogs can't be anything but good for journalism. Just as a new restaurant is good for established ones, competition is good. And fun! As another famous cowboy recently put it, "Bring `em on!"

Oh, we get it, Kathy. Reichwing blogs are good, anybody else's blogs are bad.

Not that one cares about your whiney prissy faux Phyllis Schlafly scribblings anyhow, but on the less is more principle, when one can boil down one's whole message to a single sentence, just that one sentence will do. Or, and this would be kinder and more civil, entirely spare us your puerile, silly bleatings.


Keep Blogtopia beautiful.



["Blogtopia" - - a term coined by and at Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo].

Kathleen Parker