No, this is not about environmentalism or the Oscars. It's about Eric Boehlert's whine, whine, whine about the Washington Post feature on Michelle Malkin.
Boehlert's main problem with the feature is that it isn't the typical hit piece on Malkin.
(S)he's ambitiously unserious, and her work is treated accordingly by most people in senior positions within the mainstream media (except at Fox News and the Post). That's because her daily blog is built on a foundation of hatred that literally knows no bounds -- namely, Malkin's unbridled, name-calling disdain for Democrats, peace activists, journalists, immigrants, and Muslims. Yet inside the Post newsroom, or more specifically, at the Post Style desk, Malkin is seen as a rising media star worthy of focused, fawning attention.
But Boehlert isn't just upset that Malkin wasn't eviscerated in the article (Boehlert, who has seemingly made a career out of nitpicking through Malkin's work, lists a variety of sins committed by Malkin. Would that he put forth the same effort when discussing liberal bloggers who shall remain nameless). He's absolutely hysterical that the Post isn't giving the red carpet treatment to his cronies.
Where, in the last two years, has the Post's Style section run a feature on Markos "Kos" Moulitsas Zuniga, whose DailyKos.com is the most popular political blog in the world? Where was the feature on progressive wunderkind organizer Matt Stoller, one of the forces behind the widely read MyDD website? Or pioneers like Eric Alterman (a Media Matters for America senior fellow) and Josh Marshall, who were among the first to establish progressive outposts online? Or John Amato, who revolutionized political blogging by posting video clips on his Crooks and Liars website, which, according to one recent survey, was the 10th most-linked-to political website in the world? Or Jane Hamsher, who founded influential firedoglake.com, and who's been leading a team live-blogging the Scooter Libby trial? Or Duncan Black (a Media Matters senior fellow), whose hugely popular blog, Eschaton, remains an online must-read? Or John Aravosis, the progressive activist who runs AMERICAblog and just a few weeks ago forced the candy giant Mars to yank online Snickers ads after Aravosis and others tagged them as anti-gay? (Full disclosure: I know most of those bloggers on a personal basis.)
What a shock. Boehlert knows these bloggers who have been overlooked for features by the Washington Post! Hand around the Kleenex box, dears.
This is one of the shrillest and whiniest columns I've read by Boehlert (and it isn't like he isn't prone to whining and crying). Even trying to discredit Malkin as a serious blogger is only a side issue of this column. No, the main point is that it is so unfair (foot stamp here) that the Post hasn't done loving stories on leftist bloggers. Unfortunately for Boehlert, I would suggest that perhaps the Post couldn't find a leftist blogger whose work was printable.
UPDATE: Echidne at the Snakes, of course, agrees with Boehlert but adds this to the mix:
It's because us careful and thought-provoking bloggers are a) boring, b) too obtruse and c) deficient in talk about anal sex, breast sizes, the desirability of a genocide of all darker skinned people or the best ways of lynching the members of the Supreme Court.
Maybe Echidne doesn't read the Liberal Avenger or Pandagon. She'd find plenty of discussions about those things there.
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