As Wonkette says, “They make it seem so dirty”.

Standing up for the little guy against the big rich obnoxious guy: that’s the mission of blogs, don’t you think? Or, at least it should be.
Three satirical, American-based websites — which have been written about before on VanRamblings — have taken on this ‘class warfare’ task as their raison d’être. The creative forces behind the sites are a self-described collection of misfits, sitting in their underwear in front of their computers, publishing snarky, and timely, commentary — and to date have proved wildly successful in their mission.
Gawker, Wonkette and, the newest West Coast member of the gossip family, Defamer obsessively catalogue the superficial (whether it be about politicians or movie stars); get the scoop on, and take to task, poncy journalists and illiberal celebrities; and comment on American fauna of every variety for “smart consumers, smart readers who still love trash but want to know the real deal.”
Choire Sicha, the creative force behind the blog Gawker.com, says that job one for Defamer is “to cover the industry. We want to know the whole travails of Michael Eisner at Disney, about pilots, (and) box office.”
In the course of his NPR radio interview with Madeleine Brand, Sicha admits that “we say ridiculous, foolish things all the time, and I think that’s the way it should be on the web. It’s moving fast, we want to have breaking news first, and we want to have seat-of-the-pants reactions.”

“To see beyond their own little world and get a sense of what’s really going on, journalists and readers need to get out of their pajamas,” says George Packer in the upcoming issue of Mother Jones magazine.

First, a confession: I hate blogs. I’m also addicted to them. Hours dissolve into nothing when I suit up and dematerialize into the political blogosphere … beaming myself outward along rays of pixelated light to dozens of satellites … until I’m light-years from the point of departure and can rescue myself only by summoning the will to disconnect … landing with a jolt in front of my computer. Before long, though, I’ll venture forth again to see what’s new out there — because the blogosphere changes from instant to instant.

As Packer says, “blogs are addictive — that is, both pleasurable and destructive: They’re so easy to consume, and so endlessly available.”
Blogs are all about unvarnished opinion, yours and mine and everyone else’s, a manifestation of the old art of political pamphleteering — offering a constellation of opinion.
In an age when the corporate media’s idea of journalism is meant to lead us to the belief that journalism is all about objective reporting, we know that self-serving suggestion to be nothing more than yet another corporate lie we’re told, designed to keep us misinformed and alienated from political action that would better the conditions of our lives.
Long live blogging. Keep yourself informed: click on a blog to your right.

THE WONKETTE: Ana Marie Cox is the saucy writer behind a weblog about politics that is attracting a following in election-year Washington, D.C.

The Washington Post’s Anne Schroeder, in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor’s Danna Harman, references Washington, D.C.-based blog, wonkette.com, and says of editor Ana Marie Cox: “She’s fun and fresh and right on the money — and is writing what others think but can’t always write … She can curse, for example.”
Harman, herself, writes that wonkette.com “is also another example of the boundary-busting powers of the Internet, where writers like to be less deferential to authority” — an entirely salutary trait in a writer, always.
Mischief-making, with a sense of humour and a fresh, informed and irreverant take on the events of the day, now that sounds like a formula for blogging success. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt that Ms. Cox’s politics are left — “big fat commie pinko,” as she puts it.