Oooohh, scary

Garance Franke-Ruta wrote in the American Prospect article Blogged Down that although Time magazine described the three writers for PowerLineBlog as “three amateur journalists working in a homegrown online medium [who] challenged a network news legend and won,” that In reality, its three writers are all fellows at the conservative Claremont Institute who attended Dartmouth College in the early 1970s and now work as attorneys; two of them have been writing articles as a team for conservative publications such as the National Review and The American Enterprise for more than 10 years.

In Power Line exposed "deacon" writes I love the use of the phrase "in reality" followed by a series of biographical facts that have nothing to do with the material the author purports to challenge -- i.e., whether we are amateur journalists, whether our medium is homegrown, whether we successfully challenged Dan Rather, and whether we were Time's blog of the year. The sloppy thinking behind the sloppy writing was captured brilliantly by a "Joe M" (what secret affiliations does he have?)who commented as follows on Kevin Drum's site:

Oooohh, scary. They are fellows at the Claremont Institute (meaning, they get to have their names on a masthead somewhere as thanks for their donations). They went to Dartmouth and work as attorneys! Clearly, these are not real "citizens." And they've even been known to publish articles in conservative magazines! Who would have ever thought that a blogger might be the type of person who is interested in writing! Has Powerline no shame? I can think of nothing more contemptible, really. To think, here they are posing as citizens who happen to be interested in writing their thoughts, when in reality they are Dartmouth-educated attorneys who have written for publications before!

Deacon does say In the interest of full disclosure, I should confess that I have never given any money to the Claremont Institute (which took me on as a Fellow only after I had established myself as a blogger). But that's only because I'm, um, frugal, not because it doesn't deserve my financial support. Our status with the Claremont Institute was best described by Rocket Man this way: 1) we write when we feel like it; 2) they print our stuff if they feel like it; and 3) alas, no money changes hands.

Franke-Ruta's approach to Power Line mirrors her approach to the other bloggers who come in for attack. She simply drops whatever biographical information she has without any analysis of how it might undercut the blogger's credentials as a "citizen," his or her ability to say valid things, or the truth and quality of what the blogger actually said

What a person writes should be evaluated on the truth and quality of what they say, how well they say it, what justification they give for their opinion, and how well they document their sources. Their background is immaterial, as are publications they have written for in the past.