Calpundit doesn’t like Rush Limbaugh and he doesn’t like “blegging” (a word coined by John Derbyshire, btw, meaning to ask– or beg — blog readers for help ). Both are certainly defensible positions. I think the blegging around here can get pretty thick at times (and I can be a major culprit I know). But I think Calpundit’s getting himself overly worked-up.
First of all, if there’s a blogger out there who doesn’t get information. tips, insights from readers, I’ll bet you he’s a terrible blogger. In fact, bloggers brag about the interactive and synergistic nature of the blogosphere all of the time. But for some reason, Calpundit seems to think that the interaction must be passive and unsolicited? Why? That seems pretty arbitrary. Perhaps he’s just being opportunistic and going after conservatives for something that doesn’t actually bother him in principle? Sounds pretty hacky to me.
As for my specific bleg, asking readers for tips on particularly egregious Rush-bashing, So what? Sure I do my own research. But I’m also a deadline columnist. Nexis searches turned up thousands of mentions of Limbaugh. I’d seen many good examples and had many others emailed to me unsolicited. But I wanted more so as to be thorough. Calpundit calls this hackdom and accuses me of not thinking it was true that Rush had been ganged-up on. That’s B.S. If I had a researcher and asked him or her the same question it wouldn’t indicate that I’m a hack, would it? Well, sometimes I rely on Corner readers for the same thing — especially when I can’t catch every TV radio show, let alone every columnist . But more often, I rely on them to tell me when I’m all wet or don’t know what I’m talking about. There’s no reason to assume that I rely on them to tell me what to write. And, frankly, I resent the charge of hackdom from Calpundit — a generally intellectually honest guy. I think I deserve a bit more credit and I know our readers do.