Broder Lobs Another Grenade at Bloggers

The war between bloggers and the establishment media continues unabated, with David Broder, "dean" of the Washington press corps, pushing the lamest of lame blog canards:

"Judging from the amount of publicity they gleaned, the liberal bloggers who gathered in Las Vegas recently for the first annual YearlyKos convention represent the cutting edge of thinking in the Democratic Party.

But the blogs I have scanned are heavier on vituperation of President Bush and other targets than on creative thought."

Oh, those angry bloggers, short on reason, big on Bush-hating.

Last month I wrote about the ABC's of Liberal Blogging:

"In recent months, several prominent media and political figures have had run-ins with left-leaning bloggers (examples here, here, here, here, and here). Their reactions have been eerily similar. Greg Sargent describes it accurately: "In recent weeks, one member after another of the D.C. media establishment has gone out of his way to depict bloggers as hysterical, angry and destructive. To hear them tell it, bloggers sitting at their computers are akin to squalling brats in high-chairs chucking baby food at their sober, serious elders -- i.e., major figures at the established news organizations."

As I sat down to craft a thoughtful post about [Richard] Cohen's latest outburst, I got a call from a conservative blogger with whom I'm appearing at a blog workshop. He'd just read the Cohen piece and much as he said he enjoyed watching liberal bloggers get criticized, he articulated a response to Cohen that was far less polite (and shorter) than the one I intended to post: "Tough sh*t! So after thirty years of writing this stuff in a bubble, you're finally getting feedback from people who are pissed off. Deal with it."

So, to David Broder, in the spirit of my rightwing blogger friend: "tough shit." Much as you'd like to wish them away, bloggers are the tip of an ever-sharpening online spear.