Let's just change a few words and see how it looks:
SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. -- In the angry life of Maryjoe O'Mally, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her ex-husband is still Bob Smith. The sun has yet to rise and her family is asleep, but no matter; as soon as the realization kicks in, O'Connor, 37, is out of bed and heading toward her computer.
Out there, awaiting her building fury: the Angry Divorced Wives, where O'Connor's reputation is as one of the angriest of all. "One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs, as she wonders what she should scream about this day.
She smokes a cigarette. Should it be about her ex-husband, whom she considers "malevolent," a "sociopath" and "the Antichrist"? She smokes another cigarette. Should it be about the "evil" men out there, or their "weaselly, capitulating, self-aggrandizing, self-serving" girlfriends?
This WAPO piece is just sad and pathetic. It's like watching vaudeville performers in blackface. This reporter has taken an intelligent, civil, thoughtful, informed, rational, productive community, and with one broad stroke of his journalistic brush, turned us into a pack of hysterical, delusional, obsessed lunatics, who quaintly overestimate their self-importance. I'm embarrassed and ashamed.
When the piece began to ponder the importance and usefulness of the blogger community, I thought that we were finally getting into the real story. Perhaps we would learn about the fighting Dems, featured here every Tuesday and on Air America. Or perhaps the piece would go into how thoroughly and honestly we dissected the TANG docs, to a degree unseen anywhere else in the media. Or perhaps we would learn about how we caught Ben Domenech's plagiarism (although I can understand why they might skip over that one). Well then, maybe we would hear about the Kaloogian photo. Or perhaps just an overall view of how hungry we are for information -- of the hundreds of stories we comb through every day. Or hey, maybe we would even hear about how I wrote a line for Kerry in 2004. That was a fun little moment.
Nope. We're all just a pack of screaming wackos, who sit around shouting swear words all day like a tourettes syndrome support group.
I don't know how to say this, but I have to. We are being used. We are being used to go on Fox News to trash Democrats. We are being used to make the bloggers look hateful and irrelevant. Please, let's not let them.