To blog a conference seminar entitled Can Blogs Be Trusted? is an exercise in ontological absurdity. To listen to The New Republic's Jason Zengerle announce that "If you're going to blogs for straight facts, per se, I don't think they're the most reliable resources," gives us the Fear. Can I trust that I heard him correctly? Can I trust him at all? After all, he blogs, too.
Zengerle described a lawless landscape of political bloggers playing loose with facts to advance an agenda, savaging above-board media outlets such as The Politico for revealing unsavory trashtalk involving Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and Gen. Peter Pace. No better than mercenaries, these hatchet men, they should be eyeballed cautiously, Zengerle said.
Indeed, we're looking at his blog now. Here's his most recent post:
"BEFORE HE WORKED FOR FOX NEWS. . .:
Britt Hume was a commie symp. Well, not exactly, but he was the target of CIA surveillance in the early '70s, according to the agency's "family jewels" documents that are being declassified."
Commie symp, eh? Zengerle linked to this Washington Post story, to which our own Ryan Singel linked -- reliably, we believe. But that's not where the trip down the blogging rabbit hole on Saturday ended. Back in the seminar, a man heckled Zengerle. Then Zengerle's father stood up and asked a question about the parallels between talk radio and political blogging. At least the man said he was his father. Maybe he was a blogger.
Zengerle then recounted a threatening letter he received that described a fitting sentence for a liberal writer like him: being tied up with a spoon in his mouth while prisoners in Auschwitz got enemas and relieved themselves in his throat. Did he really say that? Yes. Of that, I am sure.
