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James Wolcott opens his exploration of politics blogs in the April Vanity Fair (not online) by asking "are we in danger of drowning in blogorrhea?" But he comes around, shows himself a close reader of politics sites, and concludes "journalism can't and shouldn't be taken over by bloggers, but they can take away some of the toys, and pull down the thrones." Headline: "The Laptop Brigade...best thing to hit journalism since the rise of the political pamphlet..."
Along the way he credits Mickey Kaus, Andrew Sullivan and Virginia Postrel as "real writers" -- quotes his -- who ran against the amateur grain of early blogs, gives props to Kevin Drum's Calpundit for "superb Sherlock Holmes sleuthing" and features the Daily Kos, Atrios and Joshua Marshall's Talking Points Memo. In Wolcott's view, "liberal blogs [such as those] are now where the bonfires blaze."
There's also this passage about links, centering on Kaus:
...There is no graver act than to remove a site from one's blog roll, eliminating the link. It can be a haughty kiss-off or a sad rebuke; either way, it's public notice that you no longer wish to be associated with this louse. By thy links they shall know thee, and the fact that neo-liberal blogger Mickey Kaus (Kausfiles at Slate) links to both Lucianne Goldberg, the right-wing Broom-Hilda of Monica Lewinsky infamy, whose comments section teems like a cauldron with racist, homophobic hate speech, and Ann Coulter, the She-Wolf of Sigma Chi, is evidence to his foes not of the Mickster's catholicity but of his scaly lizardry.
The Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas Zuniga is shown at home in Berkeley.