When Is a Blog Not a Blog?

Just a thought that occurred to me as I was reading Andrew Sullivan this morning (not so strange, that): There are certain blogs that are really part of the establishment press, Sullivan's one of the first among them. I find it somewhat humorous when Patrick, subbing for Sullivan, can make a post like this without comment

What Greenwald's commentary is criticizing, of course, is the Washington press establishment, of which Sullivan is an integral part. (I'm still chuckling over Sullivan's post quoting Peggy Noonan on what Middle America is like.) That's one reason I find blogs such as Swampland pretty much superfluous -- c'm on, boys and girls, it's Joe Klein and Ana Marie Cox making like "Regular People."

In all honesty, I'm forced to ask myself if bloggers, as a group, do the same thing. Yes, some of them have particular areas on which they concentrate -- hilzoy on the administration's attempts to abrogate the Consitution, Jack Balkin, obviously, on the legal issues involved in our politics, Dave Neiwert on racism -- but I don't get this sense of flogging dead horses that I get from, for example, the brouhaha over Obama's bowling scores. . That got mentioned, usually a brief note dripping sarcasm, but it was, quite properly, a not-a-story. If you look at the chart in Greenwald's post (referenced in Patrick's post lnked above), it got over 1,000 mentions in the press. John Yoo's torture memo, which is certainly of more significance, got just over 100.

And Jake Tapper wonders why we don't trust him.