Further to this, more evidence of a backlash by the threatened dead-wood-publishing-on-dead-trees media against the blogosphere.
The shameful case of blogger Owen Barder (link currently dysfunctional, perhaps permanently?) hounded by the news media (in this case, the Daily Mail, but don't assume it will stop with them) has been highlighted by Tim Worstall (hat-tip to Not Saussure).
Tim includes two damning comparisons, which reinforce my point that any criticism of the blogosphere about aggressiveness or crudity applies at least as well to the MSM.
1) The Mail tries to make capital out of Barder calling Bush a fascist. In fact, Barder was citing celebrated il-liberal talking head Naomi Wolf from the Guardian.
2) The Mail tut-tuts at Barder referring to "a correlation between fitness and all night sh******." As Tim points out, when a substantial part of Rod Liddle's column in today's Sunday Times "is a complaint that Jerry Hall should keep her vagina to herself" the use of *** is really rather sweet.
I'm all for drawing attention to left wing ideology where it doesn't belong, or when it pretends it isn't there, but that can hardly be said for a civil servant's personal blog.
The first salvos have been fired, everyone. Get ready to defend the blogosphere against further phoney attacks. Political differences should be put aside in favour of the bigger theme of free speech.
