Would that it were so...

With Henry Hanks going into early retirement, I figured I had better circle back and check Bloggerman, Feedster, Google News and a few other search engines for KO news. Besides this from Ripclaw there was not much out there on Keith lately except his own post from a few days ago.

Turns out Keith hasn't blogged in a few days after unburdening himself of his traumatic experience, a harrowing brush with blog-fueled paranoia. Let's have Keith set the scene:

Something happened in December from which I'm just cooling down. It represents all the worst byproducts of this useful new form of media, and it underscores that we’re all going to have to figure out how to address them or the blogosphere will succumb to Global Warming long before the planet will.

Gosh, that sounds horrible. What could could have happened two months ago that rocked Keith's world so badly that he is only now recovered enough to speak about it? Keith goes on:

I got an email...from a woman who identified herself only as Alexandra, who insisted "something clearly has happened to your coverage. Looks like 'bait and switch' to me… your quote...from the Kerry attorney saying they believed Bush really won...is so far fetched, I may as well have been listening to Karl Rove or Scott McClellan..."

Ah! This terrible tale of life in the blogosphere starts, as so many do, with a simple e-mail. Lulled by the simplicity of this opening feint, Keith "replied gently to Ms. Alexandra..."

Who could have expected such a nefarious turn of events from such an innocent exchange? Certainly not Keith who fell unwittingly into "Alexandra's" trap. Keith continues:

The next afternoon she was back. “Can someone get a statement DIRECTLY from Kerry’s office that ‘Hoffmeier’ (sic) is INDEED his attorney? No one’s heard his name before (though maybe Bush/Cheney lawyers, or Karl Rove might have a clue)..." As Charlie Brown used to say, arrrgh!

Riveting. Horrofiric. It is just a wonder Keith has been able to go on MSNBC each night! Can you imagine? Keith got TWO whole e-mails, from an anonymous source, doubting the great KO.

Now some of you may be asking how or why this e-mail has anything to do with blogs. After all, Keith just decried this "incident" as representing all "the worst byproducts of this useful new form of media (blogs)" and noted how it underscores the need to "address" these horrible byproducts. Is "Alexandra" a blogger? Does "Alexandra" read blogs? Is "Alexandra" Alexandara? We don't know - and apparently neither does Keith.

Keith's whiny, self-indulgent post continues with irony so thick that regular readers of OlbermannWatch hardly need me to explain it.

I wouldn't get very far if I just made the news up every day, including quotations and even entire people.

Every day? No. But how about comparing the efforts of the KGB-backed Ukranian government to assassinate an opposition candidate to Ken Blackwell refusing to accede to every loony left claim about Ohio voting?

I wouldn't get very far just making this stuff up out of whole cloth.

You mean like reporting Kathy Dopp's fabricated "analysis" of vote fraud in the Florida panhandle.

What wore me out, of course, was the idea that because I was presenting news that a viewer didn't like, I had to have sold out to one party or another, and/or fabricated it. The woman presumed that I had created a fictional character, was stupid enough to quote him on national television, and was guilty of both these crimes and had to get a note from John Kerry that I wasn't making it up.

Keith make things up? You mean like lifting false information from blogs, presenting it as your own reporting, then failing to issue a correction when called on the error. Or maybe reporting on news from Indiana University where Keith quoted the fictional character Dr. Hosung Lee commenting on a non-existent report about a fabricated Kinsey Institute study. To paraphrase Keith's line about Dr. Lee, "KO is a pip, isn't he?"

With no need to apply logic or reason to his rant, Keith opines "If this is the ultimate impact of the blog on the MSM, we’re only going to have a newscast once every few months. We'll be spending the intervening time preparing the footnotes and the affidavits."

So far the impact of blogs on the MSM have been to shove frauds like Dan Rather and Eason Jordan out of a job. Is Keith starting to feel the heat?