Pundit wankery

Chris Suellentrop:

And while it's true that his role as a Dean consultant was disclosed and reported in the press on multiple occasions, it came as a surprise this week to a whole lot of people, including a lot of prominent bloggers.

Um, who gives a shit who it surprised? As Atrios says:

It isn't sufficient to tell reporters in mainstream media outlets, or to post it on your website for months. Unless you telepathically communicate it to the entire population of planet Earth, MicrosoftWashington Post Co.-owned Slate will find fault.

Next is Novak:

Howard Dean is running for Democratic National Chairman the same way he ran for President-- as the squeaky clean candidate. Well, he may have been squeaky, but he wasn't so clean. Zephyr Teachout who was head of internet outreach for the Dean campaign has revealed the campaign hired two political bloggers to say positive things about Dr. Dean at the price of $3,000 a month-- that's play for pay.

Reader Mitch Gore offers the perfect rebuttal:

To have someone who outs covert CIA operatives and endangers national security, try to lecture me about "'ethics' while not only getting his facts wrong, but spreading outright lies.. is a fine example of just how pathetic the mainstream media has become.

But the grand prize goes to Hugh Hewitt and Bill O'Reily's mutual "tsk tsk" joke of a show. Here's the transcrip. A choice quote:

HUGH HEWITT [AUTHOR]: No, Bill. In fact, the idea of payola is very dangerous. Bloggers on the take are very bad for the business of blogging. Blogging of real journalists, and people like Power Line and like InstaPundit and myself, we don't like it when Daily Kos shows up on the take of the Howard Dean campaign. Now Daily Kos says, this is one of the bloggers from the left, says he disclosed it, but not to the satisfaction of anyone who watches him. I didn't know.

O'REILLY: Aw, this is bunk. This is bull. Nobody knew about this.

HEWITT: That's right.

Nobody? ABC News knew about it, Salon knew about it, Online Journalism Review knew about it, the San Francisco Chronicle knew about it, Wired knew about it, New York Times Magazine knew about it, American Journalism Review knew about it, everyone who visited my site in the summer and fall of 2003 knew about it. And I got those links with about 5 minutes of Googling. But dumb-fuck O'Reilly and dumb-fuck Hewitt didn't know about it, so "nobody" knew about it.

I wonder what color the sky is in their make-believe fantasy world.