Poor Richard Cohen.
Then I wrote about Stephen Colbert and his unfunny performance at the White House correspondents' dinner.
Kapow! Within a day, I got more than 2,000 e-mails...
Truth to tell, I peeked into only a few of the e-mails. I did this because I would sometimes recognize a name I thought I knew, which was almost always a mistake. When I guilelessly clicked on the name, I would get a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden verbal sewage right in the face.
I'd be willing to accept the news media's growing "the left bloggers are so mean and angry" if they would even try to figure out why we're angry. They take no responsibility. Is it because we've watched these people fritter away their responsibilities, year after year, to speak truth to power, or just the plain truth for the sake of truth? Is it because we see many of them as fattened guinea pigs held in the cages of Washington politicians, with no effort to do anything for themselves? Is it because we see many of them culpable in spreading the lies, and hiding the truth, of the current Republican regime? Is it because we believe that many of them are holding their jobs as a matter of privilege and not retaining it based on any marketplace value analysis?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Still, I don't hate you, Richard Cohen. In fact, if you were somewhere else - like Kansas City or Manitoba or Gas City, Indiana, I might really, really like you. But I don't like you in Washington. I don't like you covering national stories. You're not funny nor smart nor do you say things at the appropriate time. You have an audience smaller than many bloggers, not exactly American Idol numbers. You're everything you complained Colbert was except honest. So shut up about it already.
