Blogging Is Over, Part XXXVII

So it turns out if you just congratulate each other hard enough, eventually you'll get a pat on the head from the leader of the free world. Sez President Bush:

"I find it interesting that the old way of gathering the news is slowly but surely losing market share," Bush said in an exclusive interview for the new book STRATEGERY. "It's interesting to watch these media conglomerates try to deal with the realities of a new kind of world…

"I think what's healthy is that there's no monopoly on the news," Bush said. "There's competition. There's competition for the attention of, you know, 290 million people, or whatever it is.

"And the amazing thing about this world we live in is that there's a kind of free-flowing, kind of bulletin board of ideas and thoughts out there in the ether space, sometimes landing on somebody's desk and sometimes not, but always available. It's a very interesting period."

Having long been pilloried by the mainstream media, Bush now finds the rise of the alternative media nothing less than revolutionary.

"It's the beginning of the twenty-first century; it also happens to be the beginning of—or near the beginning—of a revolution in newsgathering and dissemination," he said. "Not in newsmaking—that tends to be pretty consistent."

Whole story here.

I'm hoping our own gaius marius will turn up with one of his too infrequent jeremiads about how the mob has now managed to destroy the last institutional check on the power of The Leader, but in the meantime I'll just say that when the president is giving a shoutout to the blagues, the phenomenon has gone beyond lame and has reached a state of Rascal-bound decrepitude. C'mon George, who's your favorite? Daily Kos? Quinn Cummings, inventor of the Hip Hugger? The Comics Curmudgeon?

This is not the first time blogging has died. Previous deaths here, here, here, and (the most ignominious death of all) here.