Harold Ickes

When people in the media wish to criticize bloggers they should start naming names and start being specific. If we aren't important enough to be engaged specifically than ignore us. It's fair to talk about the blogosphere as a collective at times as it's fair to talk about the mainstream media as a collective at times, but complaining about the nasty tone of the whole party is just cheap and sloppy journalism.

The greater sin of Cohen today was implying that blog readers are balkanized into political camps and are therefore uninformed and stupid. That's one of the worst misconceptions of people who read blogs who are, after all, the people who are most interested in news and political debate - interested enough spend a more than healthy amount of time online keeping up to speed. Cohen shows contempt for the people most likely to know who he is and care about what he writes.