Blogs Is Just Blogs... Mostly

Juan Cole today takes a swing at self-inflated bloggers like Jeff Jarvis (who he correctly identifies as a "Republican in Democrat Clothing") and their ill-informed crusade to overhaul traditional journalistic media with a barrage of right-wing warblogger groupthink. Cole says that blog readers "too often look for mirrors of their own views."

The mean-spiritedness of Jarvis toward those with whom he disagrees, and his celebration of often unrepresentative Middle Eastern bloggers, typifies this danger... The danger is all the greater because Jarvis has used his old TV Guide rollodex to convince the journalists that he speaks for the bloggers in general as the expert on the medium... People watching Fox and then bloviating at Little Green Martians or whatever are not doing journalism. Most of the people working in the studio at Fox Cable News are not even doing journalism ...

As I've said before, I think Jarvis' crusade is just another neocon-funded effort to undermine tradiitional media like the New York Times. Jarvis still hasn't explained his own involvment in the concerted hysteria that caused Eason Jordan's resignation (a story which he now totally ignores). As Cole points out, blogs like Andrew Sullivan, Jeff Jarvis and Right Wing News get tens of thousands of hits a day. Scratch the surface and I suspect you will find some very interesting GOP funding behind those blogs.