The Creeping Slander

I read Michael Standaert's review of Hewitt's book Blog today.

The review itself is the kind of thing you get when you combine a facile skimming of a book with a pre-ordained review driven by an agenda. Nothing to see here, move along.

Except for a tiny, tossed-off afterthought at the end.

I mean, the review itself is comical; to call Hugh Hewitt "Limbaugh-esque" betrays complete ignorance of Hewitt and talk radio, and tempts one to suspect Standaert is working from a list of talking points. And he numbers strawmen among his acquaintances:

But Lott's and Rather's own miscues and ethical lapses were what ultimately brought them down — not bloggers. It was up to USA Today, part of that liberal mainstream media, to uncover the scandal that journalist Armstrong Williams was being paid by the Department of Education to talk up the federal "No Child Left Behind" program — not bloggers.

News flash: the mainstream media still covers stories. The Williams story shows the extent to which the major leftyblogs are followers and propaganda shills rather than investigators and reporters; it has little to do with Hewitt's book.

No, here's the part I found interesting:

Hewitt ponders a "dozen blogs I would launch" and imagines a central blog that would cover the publishing world, link to Amazon and generate buzz. It would be one that causes book sales to soar when the author of this hypothetical blog praises a book, or plummet when given a fervent thumbs down.

What Hewitt fails to see is that there already is a growing infrastructure of litblogs available that are independent, not beholden to a single publisher and not taking payola to promote or trash competitors' books.

Er...whaaa?

Single publisher? Payola?

Standaert clearly is inferring - within the device of comparing his image of conservative blogs at large with the "infrastructure of litblogs", - that we conservative bloggers all answer to one master, and the master shows his appreciation in cash.

It's the same line Nick Coleman uses with such trained-monkey-like regularity; it's an integral part of the NYTimes' response to Easongate; watch for it to spread up and down the left wing media in coming months. Conservative bloggers are on the take, everybody knows it - so much so, we don't need no steenkin' evidence.

Of course, there's won't be a shred of evidence, and for heaven's sake, pay no attention to the fact that such a hierarchy is a fundamental part of the lefty blogosphere, with Kos working for Howard Dean and other unnamed clients, Atrios and Ollie Willis on the Media Matters payroll, and Matt Yglesias and Josh Marshall working for key lefty organs.

Watch for the slander to become the subtext to every story involving the blogosphere in the major media, and their minions.

Posted by Mitch at February 14, 2005 08:13 AM | TrackBack