Good word

"The moment Mr. Foley's e-mails became known, we saw that brand of fearmongering and bigotry at full tilt: Bush administration allies exploited the former Congressman's predatory history to spread the grotesque canard that homosexuality is a direct path to pedophilia. It's the kind of blood libel that in another era was spread about Jews."

-- Frank Rich ($)

Yes, I'll hold

Yesterday on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette fame (and now of time.com) said this:

Bloggers really are kind of parasitic on the actual reporting that many mainstream media outlets do. Let's face it, reporting is very expensive, it's very time consuming. It's not something that has immediate rewards. And blogging for all the good things that it can do, the kind of collective intelligence can bring to analysis, isn't -- isn't the kind of medium that really sustains any kind of thoughtful investigation.

Bloggers indeed are not known for doing original reporting, and instead commonly link to mainstream news outlets as their sources -- and, as commonly, to other bloggers.

Why is this? Does anything prevent bloggers from, to paraphrase Nicholas Lemann, calling powerful people on the phone and asking them blunt and impertinent questions, then reporting the responses? And would we all benefit if bloggers habitually did? Probably, though the change would come at the expense of newspaper journalists like yours truly.

But the fact is, it's not particularly fun to call powerful people and ask them blunt and impertinent questions. It can be downright uncomfortable, actually, though it gets easier with practice. It's a skill, really, and it helps make journalists journalists.

Pointer

When I can't think of anything to write about on the Web, I can always write about something I wrote for the Web on another Web site.

You had to be there

To you pop culture mavens I commend this Nashville Scene article, from last August, about the Music City's rock milieu in the 1980s. I was a youth there in those days, and it was a heady time, when the alternative-country genre known as cowpunk seemed on the verge of breaking through in a big way. That was thanks especially to the musical pyrotechnics of Jason and the Scorchers, a truly marvelous '80s Nashville band.

The breakthrough didn't quite happen -- quick, how many other cowpunk bands can you name? -- but there was a kind of fervor going around in that small network of clubs and bands. And then, suddenly, it was all over. Mainstream country's commercial triumph under Garth Brooks was about to get underway, and there was not much room left in Nashville for quirky alternative types.

After the Scorchers, my favorite group in the scene was Raging Fire, which combined the twangy urgency of cowpunk and the psychedelic swirl of another '80s musical subgenre, the paisley underground. Check out Raging Fire's magnum opus, "A Family Thing."

Oneupmanship

The Grand Old Party must have wished upon a star, since really, no news development could knock a pederastic congressman and an accompanying swirl of corruption out of the headlines four weeks before an election. Absolutely no news development. Well, maybe one news development.

KIM JONG IL WITH A FREAKING NUKE.

Lacuna

I read with interest this article about gossip columnist Lloyd Grove, who after a three-year stint has left his job with the New York Daily News. If you watched the reality television series "Tabloid Wars," which aired on Bravo last August, you'll recall the moment in the debut episode when Grove reveals that he does not know who Sheryl Crow is. Yes, a New York gossip columnist who does not know who Sheryl Crow is.

But surely that's not why he left his job.

In the paper

Check out my cover story in the latest Isthmus, about how religious groups are organizing for and against Wisconsin's proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.