But you can't take the DC Media Bubble out of Wonkette.

Am I alone in having not followed Wonkette's professional transition?

I didn't think her blog was worth half a domestic Holstein's loaf. And now she's writing for Time?

Gee, howdy. How did I miss Ana Marie Cox's transition to hatchet-wielding member of the DC media establishment?

She was dispatched (presumably as a woman with some "blogging" experience) to Las Vegas to cover Yearly Kos, an effort directed at the netroots community. She had her own blog for a time, although repetitive and gratuitous references to marginal sexual practice * pretty much undermined whatever credibility that she might have as a serious news source.

But, apparently, she thinks she's all growns up now. And apparently, her bosses think so, too.

Fisking to follow...

As the men behind the nation's two most influential liberal blogs — dailykos.com and atrios.blogspot.com — Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Duncan Black draw interested stares, small crowds and quiet, admiring gossip from the bloggers, lurkers and activists gathered here at the Riviera. They are the Brangelina of Yearly Kos.

And by invoking the spectre of "Brangelina" in the first graf of this outing, you know you can pretty much safely ignore every single thing that comes after. Why reduce the news of the Yearly Kos to a tabloid soundbite? Of course, it's because she can, now that she's one of the Kewl Kids at the Kool-Aid table. And the message is, of course: "Blogging: Unserious News."

One journalist presses some workshop attendees on the apparent disconnect between the online bomb- throwers and the chatty, eager conference goers. A woman explains that one would never attack someone in person the way you can online: "It's the difference between bombing someone from 50,000 feet and sticking a bayonet between their eyes." And most people, she observes, can't deal with sticking a bayonet between the eyes. "Unless you're really psychopathic."

Actually, unless you're Ann Coulter. But keep it up, Ana Marie. What you're perpetrating here is commonly known as a hatchet job. You know. Hack, hack, hack. Keep hacking away. You'll be right up there with the psychopaths in no time.

It doesn’t seem that vital to pay attention [to Tom Tomorrow], but halfway through the act, a Yearly Kos volunteer stops by the conversational knot I’m in and shushes us. It’s the first sign of militancy and while they may not be reaching for the bayonets...

Tsk, tsk, tsk. No, sugar. What Tom Tomorrow was doing was not an "act." He's a nationally respected cartoonist discussing politics and his creative process. I can only assume that what you were doing could have been done out in the hallway, but don't let propriety get in the way of making a few catty remarks and drawing attention to yourself.

...the audience stomps and hoots when Moulitsas takes the stage. He smiles benignly and begins: “My name is Markos and I run a site called Daily Kos — maybe you’ve heard of it.” They greet his sardonic understatement with appreciative howls.

Stomping! Hooting! Howling! Gee, what sort of picture do you think she's trying to paint of the crowd here?

The speech starts with a warm celebration of the site’s achievements (including the somewhat dubious claim that Jon Tester owes his primary Senate victory in Montana to them and not to his opponent’s zipper problem)

Of course, the MSM is so completely above amplifying the zipper problems of any Democratic candidates in the press. No, no, no. The personal life of Democratic candidates is completely out of bounds.

...and then becomes self-congratulatory, boasting about the insurgent primary challenge to Joe Lieberman, where the incumbent now leads by only 55-40. The message of these triumphs? That the “riff- raff” has triumphed over the elite.

Actually, the message is that people-powered politics can make a difference. Lieberman has actually gone down in his polls about 10 points since the primary. But, to a fledgling Time magazine reporter, that's off-script, and therefore, cannot be reported.

Moulitsas winds up his speech with an indictment of both the media elite and the political elite. “People power is taking the country by storm” because they “have failed us.” That may be true, but the political elite, at least, wants to make it up to them. Or at least buy them a drink.

Here, Cox betrays her prejudices. She and her Kewl Kidz Komrades in the press think very much of how well they are schmoozed and boozed by the GOP establishment, but when it's perpetrated by the Democratic grassroots, it's somehow schmaltzy, fake... it pretends to be something it's not.

Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, gives a keynote speech, then schmoozes in the blogger media room. She fields their questions gamely though at times she sounds less like she’s talking to anything remotely like the press than she is talking to a group of possibly hostile foreign nationals. “You people,” she says a lot. “That’s how you can help,” she asserts several times, though she doesn’t seem positive about it.

"Democrats don't understand their base. Democrats are out of touch. Democrats hate their constituents."

Richardson and Clark talk to their audiences in the same cautiously flattering way, making self-deprecating but pat references to how old and out of touch they are with this new generation — remarks that were clearly thought up long before they walked into the room, which is filled with plenty of gray hairs and laugh lines.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Everyone knows that the attendance at Yearly Kos by so many traditional politicians (we’re also going to be treated to speeches by Tom Vilsack, Howard Dean and Harry Reid) assures bloggers’ place in the political universe. Shortly before Moulitsas’s speech, Joe Trippi gropes for the right metaphor, comparing politicians’ courting of this nascent movement to the presidential primaries: “No one wants to skip Iowa.” Yet the politicians especially seem to be figuring it out as they go along — fear of missing the boat outweighs doubt about its final destination.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

* If you weren't familiar with Wonkette, you could pretty much boil down her contribution to the discourse to unfunny anal sex references. The only thing that she ever did that was even marginally relevant was to bring the Washingtonienne story (who was a staffer for Ohio Republican Mike DeWine, prostituting herself to a vast array of DC nobodies, and then writing pseudonymously about it) to national prominence. But, as with all things Wonkette, that particular sexual practice was inherent in that narrative.