What Fox News and the New York Times Can Agree On...

... Blogs are a menace.

A friend points out this all-too-casual anti-bloggerism from Daniel Okrent:
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Before I turn over the podium, I do want you to know just how debased the level of discourse has become. When a reporter receives an e-mail message that says, ''I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war,'' a limit has been passed.

That's what a coward named Steve Schwenk, from San Francisco, wrote to national political correspondent Adam Nagourney several days ago because Nagourney wrote something Schwenk considered (if such a person is capable of consideration) pro-Bush. Some women reporters regularly receive sexual insults and threats. As nasty as critics on the right can get (plenty nasty), the left seems to be winning the vileness derby this year. Maybe the bloggers who encourage their readers to send this sort of thing to The Times might want to ask them instead to say it in public. I don't think they'd dare.
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Forget the issue of whether the Times is too liberal or too establishment, and whether or not Okrent is a blind defender of the Gray Lady. The real issue is Dan Okrent's anti-blog bias!