Via Patterico, we find this column by David Hirschman in today’s E&P. Hirschman starts out his column with a 750-word anecdote about internet pseudonymity before acknowledging the elephant in the room, Michael Hiltzik. When he does, it’s only to defend him in part by calling it the internet equivalent of a studio laugh-track:

[W]riting praise about yourself in pseudonym-ed comments is like a sitcom using a laugh-track; pretty lame, but not ultimately harmful. It just implies that Hiltzik isn’t confident enough in his own writing to let it speak for itself (surprising for a Pulitzer-winning journalist).

While an interesting idea, a studio laugh-track is not analogous to posting pseudonymously on a political blog. There’s no interaction with a laugh-track. The laugh-track is never quoted. The laugh-track is anonymous — not pseudonymous. And, we’re not talking about a kid. This is a journalist working for the L.A. Times. To compare him to an teenager in an internet chat room isn’t accurate.

It may have been acceptable to play casual with rules of honesty and disclosure in the fledgling years of the internet, but, with the blogosphere’s increasing influence in politics and news, this kind of cavalier behavior won’t cut it.