Right Round, Baby, Right Round

Does this sound familiar to you?

It's not surprising that the campaigns are reaching out to bloggers, of course, but as near as I can tell both sides are eating this up. Bloggers everywhere are basking in the illusion that they're sophisticated media operatives, actively collaborating to figure out the best spin for their guy. Emails are flying around from all parties pleading with fellow bloggers to stay on message.

This is insane. It's bad enough when the mainstream media spends too much time lazily regurgitating talking points, but doesn't the blogosphere supposedly pride itself on being fiercely independent, a small band of brave truthtellers immune to the spin and cant of professional politicos?

Immune? As near as I can tell, bloggers are delighted to find themselves part of the spin machine. It's a real rush.

Kind of boring, though.

Where exactly is this happening? As near as I can tell, none of the blogs I follow read like they're regurgitating spin points or reproducing party hack e-mails. Nor do the ones I read spend much time sounding like sophisticated media operatives. (Only the name of this blog sounds like a sophisticated media operative; although I do wear a smart ascot and drink imported, cask-aged gin from a highball glass whenever I blog.)

If there's an epidemic of insane basking out there, it shouldn't be hard to come up with an example.