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In response to the unmasking of Deep Throat, the anonymous informant who exposed the Watergate break-ins to Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein, the Post itself has cranked up a “Deep Throat Revealed” blog. The blog runs down current stories about the revelation and gives some background, while also providing us with such scintillating details such as “Robert Redford isn’t Bob Woodward after all. He had no idea who Deep Throat was.”
Man, the bombshells, they just keep coming …
Three Way News seems to reflect the “What have you done for me lately” nature of the blogosphere, saying “Anyone else just not that interested? I get the ‘aha!’ moment, but I don’t see this as a front-page story.”
In fact, comment on the story in the ‘sphere is, well, lackluster overall — perhaps not a surprise given that it happened before 2001, which seems about the outer limit of many bloggers’ institutional memory. The Don Wood Files sticks close to the big, fat yawn meme by commenting that “Hal Holbrooke played Deep Throat in the great movie ‘All the President’s Men,'” and noting that both Holbrooke and Felt had “great hair.”
We’ll admit, we’re journo-centric, but you don’t have to be a news junkie to understand that this story closes the loop on a crucial episode in a highly contentious period in American history, one that still reverberates today. Given the ‘sphere’s almost complete indifference to the story, we can’t help but get even more, ummm, excited about the day when blogs finally destroy the print press, as so many bloggers are convinced they will. If coverage like this of one of the great mysteries of twentieth century American political life is a hint of things to come, we could be settling in for the long twilight of the Information Age.
In other news, the ultra-conservative Human Events magazine recently published its list of the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” The list reads like a syllabus from any good poli sci or political philosophy class, but who needs a good college class to teach you about politics, anyway? That’s what blogs are for.
Down and out in Saigon rips the list to shreds, decrying the laziness of the “15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders” (the magazine’s description of the panel) that put the list together. “I don’t trust them at all because they fetishize their own ideology before their competency. There are many qualities to admire in a teacher — their knowledge, their teaching ability, their humanity and their empathy. But conservatism, liberalism or socialism are not qualities to admire by themselves.”
Zoo Station is equally unhappy with the list, writing that, “The odd choices for the top ten include John Maynard Keynes, Auguste Comte and John Dewey. The Honorable mention list really shows the spots of these judges with John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, Ralph Nader and Sigmund Freud. Be careful not to shoot your drink through your nose as you browse the list.”
Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the launch of Josh Marshall’s new TPMCafe group blog. The site features heavy hitters like Steve Clemons, Mark Schmitt, Matt Yglesias, Marshall and others — a kind of Huffington Post with substance.
And what do conservative bloggers think about the new site? Trust us, we’re only asking because it’s our job. Darleen’s Place doesn’t disappoint, writing, “They pretend they are different, that they are for ‘individuals,’ but they offer up the same half-roasted, anti-individual-sovereignty beans [that] socialists, communists and anarchists have been trying to get a government-enforced monopoly to serve to us great unwashed masses for decades.”
And to think that you had doubts about the cream rising to the top …
–Paul McLeary
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