If you haven't been keeping track of the meteoric rise and fall of Ben Domenech's two-day career as the official resident wingnut blogger at the Washington Post, you need to read more blogs.  Editor & Publisher has a very professional wrap-up of the high and low points. 

Michele Malkin, in her typical cap-locked screaming style has the quintessential politically incorrect apologia you would expect from Wingnuttystan.

THE DOMENECH DEBACLE
"I criticized unhinged bloggers on the Left who leveled vicious ad hominem attacks against him. It's clear, as the good folks at Red State (which Ben co-founded) note, that his detractors were on a search-and-destroy mission from the get-go.

"But now the determined moonbat hordes have exposed multiple instances of what clearly appear to me to be blatant lifting of entire, unique passages by Ben from other writers. It is one thing to paraphrase basic facts from a wire story. But to filch the original thoughts and distinctly crafted phrases of a writer without crediting him/her--and doing so repeatedly--is unacceptable in our business.

I simply love that turn of phrase, "determined moonbat hordes."  Now that's writing!

An even better use of contemporary vernacular inventiveness comes from Shakes:

Blogenfreude's head is going to explode if he doesn't get some snark about Ben Domenech's swan song at RedState...

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Oh, somebody call the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhmbulance! The horror that mean old horrible "leftists" actually dug out things you published in college.

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I once wrote, "We used to have a healthy mistrust of our government; we assumed that the flaws of humankind weren't checked at the doorways of the White House and the Pentagon. When the shit hit the fan, we assumed that the people involved might do less than ethical things in the pursuit of self-preservation. Now to suggest such a thing is to be deemed a paranoiac. It is as though we have been asked, and, inexplicably, collectively agreed, to rid ourselves of common sense and our very understanding of human nature." DittoBoy seems to be relying on the same principle: Give me the benefit of the doubt against all logic and reason. No.

Buh-bye, Benny.

The link to "Blogenfreude" (a real blogger -- not a description of "unhinged bloggers on the Left" kicking the deserving while they're down) was my insertion.  The awesome nom de plumes are all theirs.  You have to admit that "DittoBoy" is even better than "Box-Turtle Ben", if only because you don't have to research why a Limbaugh loving serial plagiarist would be compared to a mimeograph machine.  The reference to the mating behavior of homosexual aquatic reptiles appearing in senatorial campaign speeches -- while loads of fun -- is more obscure.

So what have we learned from this incident now that we are days removed from the torrent of revelations that streaked by so fast that only political news groupies even noticed?  With internet speeds ramping up the 24-hour news cycle of cable television to 24-minutes in the blogosphere, we can rest assured that a day after Domenech resigned in disgrace we now have the benefit of historical perspective to rely on.

At least that's what you will find at Digby's Hullabaloo, Daily KOS and of course at Red State itself, which defies logic and reason by attempting to vilify the liberal bloggers who exposed this well connected hack while defending his original handle, "Augustine," and raising the coming tribulations of this sad and deluded Bush cultist to biblical proportions.  Honestly, comparing this disgusting little hate monger to a saint who now must "wander in the wilderness" as the Israelites or Geezus himself is a bit over the top.

But I'm trying to be objective here, so I have some criticism for our friends on the left who only have it half right.   FDL goes way back in history, clear to last December, four long months ago, to chart when this all started with the Post's ombudsman (ombudswoman? ombudsperson?) labeling the blogmeister of the Post's White House Briefing an opinionated liberal.  Booman sums up the liberal CW:

The Washington Post decided the best way to balance a serious and credentialed reporter like Froomkin was to go out and find a right-wing blogger to fill their pages with lies and apologistics. But they never counted on a counterfeiter. Karma is a pain in the ass.

Karma indeed.  Why on earth would a major news organization hire people whose first notice outside the "internets" was their part in spoiling the reputation of Dan Rather.  Benny built a pretty big petard for himself.

It's not enough to say that a journalistic institution should not try and balance coverage by publishing a right wing partisan blogger.  It's not enough to say that you are mixing apples and oranges when you try and deflect accusations of liberal bias by balancing journalism with right wing hackery.

Say simply: Reporting the news and disseminating propaganda are intrinsically different endeavors.

When you try and mix journalism with partisan persuasion to present a fair and balanced view, you end up with neither -- whether the partisanship comes from the right or the left.  By describing the hackery as "right" and the leanings of the accredited reporters as "left," you are buying into the frame the Hannitys of the world have been preaching for decades.

I absolutely understand the allure of trying to get some of those BushBots, who like their leader demand that only Fox News be seen on their televisions, to read your newspaper.  I also get the idea that the younger politically savvy demographic is attractive and would more likely migrate to the Post's content through blog links than buying subscriptions.  Fortunately for the Post, it is a journalistic brand, an institutionalized entity which can weather a blogswarm even more readily than the National Review, who were also tainted by association with this embarrassment.

Once again, the golden rule is in play.  Glass houses, clean hands, you know the drill, especially when you have higher and more exposed ambitions.  The Post and NRO are established brands.  Domenech and his blogmates are still reaching for legitimacy.  Redstate's attempt at martyrdom for this tawdriness will not disinfect the stench emanating from their website.

For bloggers who consistently play to people's fears to lead them to the "godliness" of their avatar in the White House much the same way as "Augustine's" namesake,  it's all too fitting that their reputation is in tatters with their holier than thou charade finally exposed.

Will bloggers in general take a rhetorical hit for this mess?  Nothing long lasting. Not in the great sceme of things, but possibly our well deserved reputation as an out-of-control unregulated medium will give the publishers and producers of corporate media pause before they once again dive into something they really don't understand.

In the end, unlike our elected officials, we cleaned our own house.  As a true voice of the multifaceted opinions of anyone with internet access, as a wide open marketplace in the most democratic example of freedom of expression the world has ever witnessed, we're bigger than any institution.