MAUREEN DOWD IS READING BLOGS, but not, alas, learning from them.
UPDATE: Bill Hobbs is running a reader contest, asking people to Dowdify Dowd! Examples:
"Blogs ... overrun ... the establishment."
"James Joyce ... Now there's a man with a future in blogging."
Of course, if it were actually Dowd, the ellipses would be omitted.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon says that Dowd is right -- the politicians' blogs she writes about stink. Well, yeah. But sadly, most of Dowd's criticisms also apply to her own, increasingly stale and formulaic, columns -- something that lots of other blogs have been pointing out for quite a while.
What's most significant about this essay is Dowd's revealed preferences about the world. What matters to her is not whether a phenomenon is important, but whether it's trendy. In the world of pop culture, this sort of distinction makes a kind of sense. In the world of politics or international relations, it doesn't.
