BLOG, is Kathleen Parker onto something?

tribune reader cited a column by Kathleen Parker. (BTW, when quoting, please keep it to 10% of the material or no more than four paragraphs. Copyright law and all.)

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.

Like Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow.

Proviso Probe would do fine if the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Trib and Sun-Times all went under.

What Golding demonstrated - and what we're witnessing as the Blogosphere's offspring multiply - is that people tend to abuse power when it is unearned and will bring down others to enhance themselves. Likewise, many bloggers seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement.

Let's consider Proviso Township. People like Serpico, Scavo, Moore, Welch, etc. have been abusing their power for years and, in some cases, decades. Now that a blog is playing a part in holding them accountable, one of their lackeys sees them as being the victims.

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.

This is self-serving Right Wing bullshit. The Right has figured how to manipulate the traditional media. They can't manipulate the more egalitarian blogosphere so they want to silence it.

Sorta sounds like Proviso Township. The powerful, self-serving pols learned how to deal with the existing media. Now that they are taking criticism from a new source their cronies are complaining about the source.

Kathleen Parker or Welch Lackey "A", it's the same thing. When you don't like the message, attack the messenger.