Lord of the blogs? Parker comes unhinged.

Kathleen Parker, never the most stable isotope in the beaker on the best of days, blows a gasket this week and decides to declare open warfare on those damned bloggers. Or, as she calls us, "the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility - the angry offspring of narcissism's quickie marriage to instant gratification."

Considering that Parker writes for the neocon koolaid overdosed ClownTownhall.com, it is beyond belief that she would step up to the podium and start casting aspersions towards others for a lack of maturity and professionalism. While I believe that the MSM is often unfairly criticized by bloggers, and that without conventional brick and mortar journalists most blogs would dry up and blow away overnight, we have also provided valuable contributions and oversight which has been sorely lacking for the former gatekeepers of opinion and news.

A few choice excerpts follow.

There's something frankly creepy about the explosion we now call the Blogosphere - the big-bang "electroniverse" where recently wired squatters set up new camps each day.

Some bloggers also offer superb commentary, but most babble, buzz and blurt like caffeinated adolescents competing for the Ritalin generation's inevitable senior superlative: Most Obsessive-Compulsive.

Even so, they hold the same megaphone as the adults and enjoy perceived credibility owing to membership in the larger world of blog grown-ups. These effete and often clever baby "bloggies" are rich in time and toys, but bereft of adult supervision. Spoiled and undisciplined, they have grabbed the mike and seized the stage, a privilege granted not by years in the trenches, but by virtue of a three-pronged plug and the miracle of WiFi.

Plenty smart but lacking in wisdom, they possess the power of a forum, but neither the maturity nor humility that years of experience impose.

Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure.

What Golding demonstrated - and what we're witnessing as the Blogosphere's offspring multiply - is that people tend to abuse power when it is unearned and will bring down others to enhance themselves. Likewise, many bloggers seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement. When a mainstream journalist stumbles, they pile on like so many savages, hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding's children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow.

We can't silence them, but for civilization's sake - and the integrity of information by which we all live or die - we can and should ignore them.

Without bloggers, how would national attention and help have been brought to bear on the case of LaToyia Figueroa, while CNN and their ilk were completely ignoring her in their breathless hysteria over Natalie Holloway months after the trail had gone cold? Over at Running Scared I ran a two week long live blogging marathon covering the trial of the St. Patrick's Four which went almost completely ignored by all but the local media. Bloggers have discovered the dirty dealings and peccadilloes of politicians and brought them to the attention of a media who seem overwhelmed with the volume of news they must sort through.

I think, rather than being truly upset over the "lack of adult supervision" in the blogosphere, Parker is more miffed at having the shortcomings of the Fourth Estate caught in the harsh spotlight of public scrutiny. Yes, there is a tremendous amount of venom and partisan hackery on both ends of the political spectrum in the blogosphere, but bloggers also fill a very evident vacuum that existed in the media for a very long time.