corrente

Bloggers are talking about Atrios's disquise coming off, but, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo got em talkin' at CNN. Check out this exchange below. Daryn Kagan speaking with someone named Regina Lewis (whoever that is), an "AOL Online Adviser" (whatever that means).

KAGAN: And here's a blogging angle for you, Regina, you might know about. The bloggers are actually watching this show, and they watched your segment yesterday.

LEWIS: Oh, absolutely.

KAGAN: I received an e-mail from a blogger named "skippy the Bush kangaroo." Not really sure where that comes from. But he or she, whatever Skippy is, took offense at our discussion of perhaps that bloggers are not putting complete truth out there, and he said, "Aren't mistakes sometimes made in journalism as well?" Skippy, point taken. And we appreciate you watching.

LEWIS: Yes, and I think what you're seeing is -- yes, I'm glad to hear that. The lines are blurring, too. You know, there's the opinion pieces, and a lot of the bloggers are also linking to resources like the Associated Press and talking about what they see on CNN. So it's kind of the merging of the best of both worlds, if you're mindful of what you're reading and where it's coming from.

"Skippy.... took offense at our discussion of perhaps that bloggers are not putting complete truth out there" (?) Ok, apparently the ironic details contained within Skippy's actual email escaped Kagan. What Skippy reminded her of, which she obviously forgot to mention (oh sure), was her own less than stellar performance when it comes to "putting the truth out there." For a full explanation of what Kagan forgot to mention read Skippy's reminder here

And, to advance the cause of irony even further, Kagan and Lewis eventually got around to plugging Matt Drudge's little rumor mill. Great waterwheel of "complete truth" and accuracy in reporting that he is.

LEWIS: Yes, it's the "Earth to Kerry" shot that appeared on Drudge yesterday,...

Well, so much for being, "mindful of what you're reading and where it's coming from."

Moving along. Some of the Kagan / Lewis conversation about bloggers consisted, for the most part, of often incomphrehensible jabber like this:

KAGAN: We talked about the television ratings, which on the broadcast networks were not fantastic. Is there a way how of monitoring how the bloggers, how many people are making hits on there?

LEWIS: There is. The online numbers were pretty consistent. You see big polling numbers, a lot of interest in specific issues. Also, you know, the rumor mill. That's what people are really after. So these circulated things mean yesterday, a blogger account, we talked about they want to get into the parties, well, here's why maybe they wanted to keep them out. Someone went up to Hillary Clinton's handler and asked her a question that you and I have asked a lot of people, "Who are you wearing?" Apparently, they were told, look, you're wearing a black shirt, she's wearing a white blazer, get over it.

Also, you know, Terry McAuliffe was spotted. I guess young girls tend to flock to him when he walks in places. Note to everybody here: Cell phone cameras, they are everywhere. So that's the kind of stuff that seems to be getting a lot of traffic. It's more the gossip than the substance, for better or worse.

Huh?, Yeah, well, you can try to figure that one out if you like. It certainly does a fine job of answering the question. Is there a way how of monitoring how the bloggers, how many people are making hits on there? Jeezis.

The next question should be: is there a way how of monitoring how... many viewers are throwing furniture at their friggin' tv sets every time CNN beams this kind of convoluted cacaphony into their living rooms?

Because, one way how or another, I might like to blog about that.

Maybe it all made more sense if you were listening to the exchange instead of reading the transcript as I did. I dunno.

In any case, a little free advertising never hurts and it was nice to see Skippy the Bush Kangaroo get a mention from the SCLM, who have, until now, largely gone out of their way to pretend that the bloggers - aside from Andrew Sullivan - don't exist.

CNN transcript of the exchange.

UPDATE: RESOURCE LINKS. Thanks to Skippy for leaving the links and descriptive summaries below in the comments thread.::

1st Post about the subject, with our email to ms. kagan en toto...

2nd Post delighting in the mention we got on cnn...

3rd Post with links to the actual transcript which not only completely misquoted us, but also proved our point about pots, kettles, and the color black vis a vis fact-checking in various media.

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