Front (Marketplace) Page of WSJ Notes Bloggers Critiquing Media's Bush Reporting

(Available on-line only through subscription.

Also, this is completely self-promoting. You may wish to skip this and listen to more Beatallica.)

The WSJ notes that "pool reports" -- formerly circulated only among reporters, but now widely disseminated among bloggers and other interested politics-watchers -- are now fodder for bloggers.

After citing a pool report in which a newstwit reports, a bit snarily, that Barbara Bush (the young one) was observed wearing tight jeans was accompanied by Ban Bartlett and Karl Rove, "who were not wearing tight jeans."

Shock of all shocks, the WSJ then reports the scary-important musings of Wonkette (or at least her ghost-writer intern) on the subject: "Well, thank God for Karl and Dan's comfortable pant choice!"

Proving, once again, why Wonkettte/her intern are simply the most indispensible on-line critics in the world today.

After the jump, the article discusses Dana Milbank's famously snide pool report in which he sarcastically refers to President Bush as "our hero" and the like. It notes the NRO story "The Real Dana Milbank?," making the rather fish-in-the-barrel case that he's a dyed-in-the-red-wool liberal, and then notes further:

The dispatch got posted on various conservative blogs, and even today is sometimes seized upon as evidence of what they consider Milbank's liberal bias.

"Milbank repeatedly calls Bush 'our' protagonist and 'our hero' -- which might be seen as cute and playful coming from a Republican or moderate, but which are definitely insulting coming from a rabidly partisan Bush-hater like [him]," fumed the Ace of Spades HQ blog in October.

Emphasis enthusiastically added. Oh, sure, I wish I'd written a sentence that was a bit more grammatically sound, but still, a mention's a mention.

I guess I missed Ms. Cox at CPAC, but we seem to have at least stumbled into the same article.

Not only do I get to show my my mom that I got a little ink from the WSJ, but I am hopeful that the media is beginning to recognize that the blogosphere consists of more than the Daily Kos, MyDD, Wonkette and (when it feels it necessary to lower itself to mention supporters of the war) Instapundit and Powerline.

Thanks to Crank Neocon for giving my mom a smile.

Meanwhile... A dopey college-student wannabe journalist thinks that blogs are the most terrible challenge this country has ever faced:

...how can a person browsing a blog be sure what has been exposed is "the truth?"

It seems as though the sick, sad world of blogging has twisted the minds of many Americans. People are relying on other, regular, everyday Americans to report to them what is going on in the world according to the blogger - leaving the people who were trained for years on the principles of journalism in the dust.

Let's be honest: this little moron is 100% right.

You're all sad and sick and blogs have twisted your easily-manipulated minds. Normal people just don't get all excited by videos of a fat-guy in a kilt throwing ping-pong balls while yelling "LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!"

More excerpts, more analysis, and the actual link to this silly little fart of an opinion piece at link cited above.

And thanks to Matthew for providing me with the on-line link to the article.