Not me! I'm not gonna take this shit lyin down! Wormer? He's a dead man! Marmalard!? Dead!

Niedermayerrrrr?!!

I like the use of the word "hoisting" there.

As in "Hoist the Black Flag".

Yes!

Gotta love the 'Lord of the Flies' reference she uses. Very appropriate.
I just don't think she realizes how appropriate, seeing as how it's a junior high school must-read, and her writing, both in tone and ability, reflects about grade 9.

When someone trips, whether Dan Rather or Eason Jordan or Judith Miller, bloggers are the bloodthirsty masses slavering for a public flogging.

Trips? Trips?!

Can I call a person of the female persuasion a wanker?

The quote was:
... "hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding's children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow."

Seems somebody can't take the heat.
Or
Finally got hit by the Clue-x-4 and found out she just blew all that money she spent on J school tuition.

Aw, she's just upset because -- unlike news journalists -- bloggers aren't required to worship at the church of Marxist economics and social policies every day after work.

She needs to start a blog.

I am not sure if she was deliberatly making a parody or not, but it works either way.
For someone to write using a Lord of the Flies metaphor in the week in which the MSM has busted open at least two legit surveillance programs designed to keep terrorists from killing - and even nuking- Americans is a bit pitiful.
For her to claim that journalists try to get it right in the face of the obvious holes in reporting done nearly daily is laughable.
For her to ask her gentle readers to simply ignore the wicked bloggers so they will not give the civilized folk vapors is roll-on-the-floor laughable.
The metaphor I would suggest she study more closely if she wants literary metaphors to sustain her thought would be the metaphor that Harlan Ellison explores about what the new gods do to the old, worn out gods.
The MSM is clearly the old, worn out and useless god.
And blogosphere is going to continue absolutely kicking the MSM lazy hack's asses on a daily basis until they stop their lying and deceitful and lazy reporting.

Holy sheepshit, what got into her knickers?
I've read 2 or 3 of her columns previously, and I never got the impression that she was fuggin nuts.
This sounds like a boyfriend or hubby problem. Some local blogger crapped on her man or something. Or maybe took a gratuitous shot at her. Whatever.
I will say that in my opinion, after much carpal inducing research to get it right, that woman needs new batteries for her vibrator.

I'm not a shrink, but this looks a serious case of projection. She's got me wishing that I had gotten a degree in psychology. That profession has to be fun if you get to listen to and laugh at people like her every day.

Bring it on, Kathleen. We're pounding the drums. We're down on the beach, sandy hair in our faces. We're gonna metaphorically put your sow's head on a stick and sprinkle it with flies. Hell, yeah. We're gonna start a fire under it by focusing the sun with Piggy's glasses on back copies of your anodyne column in New York AM, even though it shouldn't work because Piggy was nearsighted and your column makes the paper soggy, but the fire is gonna start anyway because Satan's gonna help us out.

And then after the luau, when we're picking our teeth, we'll say, "You know what's even creepier than the blogosphere? People who make inapposite comparisons of their fellow citizens to Al Qaeda or to Lord of the Flies while defending that malicious idiot Dan Rather in mainstream publications. That kind of shit really creeps me out."

I always thought the message of "Lord of the Flies" was that the kid with glasses would always be the first offed by a savage mob of English schoolboys.

Boy did I miss the point of that story.

I think her problem here is that journalists were caught in big time mistakes (some would say deliberate as well) and had to pay the price for it.

They weren't use to that. They were use to a 2 sentence retraction and then it all went away. The blogosphere has made that impossible.

And I say, good for us.

She obviously reads too many blood and guts leftie blogs.

Wow. Did a blogger pay her to perform that charicature of an elite, threatened journalist?

Now, if we could only make lawyers feel as threatened as journalists are, we'd really be making progress toward a perfect world.

It says so much about her attitude that she doesn't rightfully blame the arrogant Dan Rather for doing immense damage to the public image of big money journalism. She claims the professions bends over backwards to police itself but the fact is that Rather and Mapes would have gotten away with it if they had sprung a similar scheme just a few years earlier.

Lady, Dan Rather didn't trip. He knew exactly what he was doing but thought a juicy story that might swing a presidential election in the direction he favored was far more important than telling the truth.

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.

And so after much screeching we arrive at a rare nugget of almost-revelation; that the presence of her hated bloggies as with her beloved organization of tired wage earning mistake makers, depends on the interest of its readership and hence the collective "danger" posed by this new threat is in fact a reflection of the public desire for alternative sources of information - yes the same public that in many cases pays the wages of those (insert self righteous media handle here)s.

Miss Parker would do better to reflect on what might have created a desire for alternative news sources and whether her handlers at the MSM might just have played a teensy weensy role in that (maybe her poor downtrodden fellows Jason Blair, Andrew Gilligan, Eason Jordan, Dan RaTHer and others could help fill in the blanks for her), rather than sobbing and blubbering about how her best friend is now spending time with "that OTHER girl!!!" .

Say what you will about the so-called mainstream media, but no industry agonizes more about how to improve its product, police its own members and better serve its communities. Newspapers are filled with carpal-tunneled wretches, overworked and underpaid, who suffer near-pathological allegiance to getting it right.

I guess that explains why every newspaper in America puts its corrections right on the front page, huh?

Jesus. Drama queen much?

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.

So where are all of the stories talking about just how wrong all of the mainstream media was about what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit? Where is the savage mob with the pointy sticks?

Parker's column reminds me why I got out of journalism. It is the most thin skinned pack of hungry jackals that you'll ever meet. These are people who set the agenda and love taking down public figures, but whine when a critical letter to the editor arrives in the mail.

On the positive side, though, those guys can drink. I'm still connected to "the life" through a column I write for a local paper and attended an awards ceremony. After the ceremony, the bar was hit hard. Place ran out of three brands of beer.

Attendum: ran out of three brands of beer in a half-hour.

Kathleen Parker is better known as the woman who took a bold and controversial stand against child molestation in her column, "Adult - child relationships are wrong -- always."

Untwist your knickers please. Parker is doing what a good columnist does - she is commenting on a current phenomena and provoking conversation about the pros and cons.

She gives kudos where they belong, to the bloggers from other professions with a unique perspective on the news of the day and a great turn of phrase. She also criticizes (and with some justification) the sophomoric nature of blogging - the linking lovefests and the occasional lack of humility. Lord of the Flies? I think not, though if I were a journalist who had put in the time covering local politics and firehall fundraisers to get to where she is now, I might be a little more critical.

I think she's right in that there is quite a bit of self-congratulation within the blogosphere, certainly when you're preaching to the choir. The best bloggers in my mind are the people who can comment intelligibly and with a historical perspective on current events of the day, offering a fresh perspective and links to their research. Those are the blogs I read daily. Then there are the ones where I stop in to see what everyone is "talking" about that day. Fun, good for anger management with the MSM, but nothing that I can't live without.

Finally, there are wonderful journalists who benefit from the new media - Stephen Hayes from the Weekly Standard, the National Review gang, Mark Steyn and Heather MacDonald from the City Journal to name a few, journalists who have developed a following thanks to the blogs for making their stories more accessible and explaining why each story warrants 15-30 minutes of our time. Ironically, I discovered Parker through the new media.

Do I think you're being unfair? Yep, sometimes a little empathy goes a long way.

I posted the above comment, it wasn't an anonymous attack.

"Say what you will about the so-called mainstream media, blah blah, blah..."

Goodness, lady, did you get up and go to work at 7 this morning, then get home at 9:30 tonight? Do you do that more than once a year, if then? Maybe even 5 or six days a week?

That's the pleasure of owning your own business, and actually producing something usable, instead of pining for the good ol' days when the only game in town was the MSM.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, get a real job that actually produces something people need, and get a real life. We don't care about your carpel tunnel or the "fact" that you're picked on unmercifully. What we care about is that, if you are going to "report" (implied in the word "reporter"), at least get the facts right, try not to commit treason, and, if it gets to be too much, find something else to do. Just go away, you worthless lump that takes up oxygen others could use.

Sorry, Robin, but I've got to disagree with you. This is not a good column. This is a temper tantrum that should have had the immaturity edited out of it. There's simply no justification for this:

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.

Some of the best and most influential bloggers on the web, those who have been most critical of the media, are professionals from other fields - law, business, academia, journalism, etc. These people may not have put their dues in covering school board meetings, but they've certainly earned the right not to be compared to spoiled children just because they threaten Parker's audience.

For years, columnists like Parker had the field to themselves. It's obvious she believes journalism is a profession that can only be performed by people with her skills and her experience.

But honestly, it's not that hard.

Yes, but the column did precisely what an opinion column should do - it created a conversation about the nature of blogging and the variety of opinions on what makes for good blogging. Opinion editorials are opinions, we often don't agree with the opinion even if we like the columnist.

I disagree that her opinion should have been edited simply because some people may disagree. Remember freedom of speech? Parker has earned the right through her tenure in her field to speak her piece unedited, just as you have a right to disagree and never read her work again. Personally, I find that she is usually a voice of common sense in a sometimes non-sensical field and am happy to give her a pass on this column.

As I said, there are some absolutely terrific bloggers out there who have created a new media that I whole-heartedly embrace. But I don't think that the blogosphere is without its faults.

I disagree that her opinion should have been edited simply because some people may disagree. Remember freedom of speech?

Oh, good heavens. I'm not saying her opinions should have been edited, just her tone. That's what editors are for - to calm the worst influences of the writers that work for them. Having edited my share of opinion columns and editorials, I can assure you there's no censorship involved.

Parker is entitled to her own opinion, but not her own facts. Most of the big bloggers have paid their dues, just not in the same way that Parker has, and she has no justification (note I didn't say "right") to tell them they're unqualified.

I think the blogosphere has its faults, but Parker did a poor job of pointing them out, and the foot-stomping 'it's not fair' tone and unfair attacks of her opponents in her column diminishes what she was trying to say.

But she did say that there are some good bloggers out there who have paid their dues in other fields.
The quick offence taken by her tone, and yes it was provoking, meant that was overlooked. But her tone is precisely what makes her unique. Perhaps her editor did question the column and her evident pique and she was able to justify it to him/her her rationale for her tone.

I guess I'm not bothered by the temper tantrum because it doesn't diminish what is occurring thanks to blogs. The dialogue is alive and healthy due to discourse often provoked by columns such as hers.

Anybody want to play a game of hyperlink "tag team" with me? If anybody calls my take on Parker's column "important," I'll say they're "important," too!

But she did say that there are some good bloggers out there who have paid their dues in other fields.

Would that be the throwaway line at the end about how she 'means no disrespect' to the blogging professionals? Perhaps that's what the editor asked her to insert, but when taken in the context of her column, it's a rather weak sop to those she's spent so many inches disrespecting.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one, I think. I've never been a big fan of Parker's writing, and this column only reinforces my low opinion of her work.

I agree Slu. I was suprised to actually see her in Townhall.com. Parker always struck me as a semi socialist Soccer Mom type, her primary motivation being either her ovaries or her children. A big nanny government fan, just as long as the childrens were safe.

I could easily see her favoring government regulation of blogs or the internet, as much to keep the childrens safe when they wander out of the DU as to protect her soapbox and "profession".

Look, I realize that Parker speaks for a very specific audience - soccer moms who care about national security, who would like their children to grow up respecting even those they disagree with and who are looking for answers to the age old questions of how to raise your children in this new world. If those issues aren't relevant to you, don't read her columns.

But she does make a very true point about the lack of respect that often occurs in the blogging world - see comments above for examples. That wouldn't occur in the old media for all the public to see and weigh in. With the freedom of the new media comes a different set of responsibilities. Some people will embrace the freedom and attempt to respectfully engage those they disagree with and others will resort to name calling and other insults. It's hard to explain to your children why this is okay while dissing a lousy teacher is not.

Thanks for a fine conversation.

But she does make a very true point about the lack of respect that often occurs in the blogging world - see comments above for examples.

Oh, hang on. You have to make some distinctions here. Between blog articles and comments. Between various blogs and their individual purposes and flavors. The MSM isn't all Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor, you know. It's also Vanity Fair, Private Eye, Midnight Magazine, Playboy and National Lampoon.

Say, most of those aren't in print any more, are they? Huh.

Kathy's just not paranoid enough.

Ms. Parker is a bit touchy.

Blogs are wonderful. They are the great equalizer. For once I have the opportunity to publicly tell you to fuck off when I disagree instead of abiding your stupidity and arrogance in silence.

The "silent majority" is letting it all hang out and lovin' every moment.

I've been a subscriber to Townhall.com (of whose stable of columnists Ms. Parker is a member) for years. I'm familiar with her writings. In the past year, Townhall separated from the Heritage Foundation and went solo, and also became extremely aggressive in their annual fundraising, which just ended. Coincidentally or not, in the past year they have served us subscribers unsolicited spam inviting us to subscribe for MONEY to the execrable NY Times behind-the-subscriber-gate editorial and opinion pages, as well as feeding us increasingly anti-new media hit pieces like this latest whiny rant. I am about done with Townhall.com for these offenses. I was agog at Ms. Parker's latest column and was only waiting for bloggers to jump in her sheepdip. Fewer did than I expected which seems to confirm my suspicions that she is not on most people's radar, although LaShawn Barber also took her to task.

For me, anyone defending the MSM at this stage of the game deserves to go down with that ship! Good post!