Wonkette watched

Wonkette

Is it just us, dear reader, or does everyone find these exercises in chat-show puffery mindless? As far as we’re concerned, if “webloggers” are going to revolutionize the way Americans take in the news, Wolf Blitzer will be among the last to know. And Lou Dobbs will be far, far behind him.

Well-nigh every night on the 24-hour news circuit there’s another vapid conversation dedicated to those inscrutable little “webloggers.” In order to gain an understanding of the world of journalism as practiced by non-journalists, these programs ineluctably feature the few “webloggers” who actually are professional journalists.

This allows twits such as Anderson Cooper to ask an array of sanctimonious questions about journalistic ethics and partisanship. Ah, yes: CNN is entirely non-partisan. Just ask Eason Jordan and Ted Turner.

As if this all weren’t bad enough, the news programs’ discussion of the “weblogosphere” always includes a woman who goes by the sobriquet Wonkette.

Perhaps you’d recognize Wonkette if you saw her, dear reader: She’s a thin, wan 30-something gal who looks as if she’s been genetically engineered to live in a bog. She makes an albino look like Isaac Hayes.

But never mind the fact that Wonkette clearly resembles that girl from your kindergarten class who used to pick her nose and eat it. That’s hardly why she ruffles our collective feathers.

Why, you are no doubt asking yourself, is the crack young staff so oft perturbed by the on-screen antics of Ms. Wonkette?

In short, it’s because she’s egregiously self-impressed, as if making snippy remarks about Jeff Gannon is really so difficult. As she offers her inevitably snarky remarks about the World According to Wonkette, she resembles nothing so much as the Internet’s Marie Antoinette.

“Let me tell you how the world works,” she intones, clad in vertiginous pastels that violently clash with her Conan O’Brien color palette.

To which we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” reply: Look, Wonkette. We’re sorry you didn’t make the cheerleading squad in high school because your ribs are iridescent. But could you please can the smugness? You’re like David Spade and Dennis Miller’s love child, for crying out loud.

And then there’s the matter of Wonkette’s “weblog,” which we hear is called Wonkette. Frankly, dear reader, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have never read said “weblog.” We just aren’t that interested in her brand of yuppie DC gossip-mongering.

We wonder why: Have you heard whom Tony Blankley is dating? Wonkette has recently learned that he and Eleanor Clift are having a torrid love affair. Pat Buchanan caught them in a three-way with John McLaughlin. He was in the throes of passion, screaming “Issue Four!”

How come that hasn’t gotten our collective juices flowing? To each his own, we suppose.