I innocently picked up Blog (short for "weblogs") because I really didn't know much about them, unless you count the occasional trip to friends' sites at www.livejournal.com. I expected to learn about the different kinds of blogs, what makes a good blog, that sort of thing-a "Blogs for Dummies"-and then I would share my newly gained blog knowledge with you lovely readers. (Bloggers regularly, or not so regularly, post information and commentary online. Anyone can create and maintain a blog).

Unfortunately, what could have been an informative book somehow devolved into a gleeful and self-righteous rant. The entire purpose of this book is to reassure right-wing Americans that the evil liberals controlling our media will soon have hell to pay. Oh, and author Hugh Hewitt is clearly hoping the book will lead to more traffic on his blog, given the number of times he mentions it. Don't give him the satisfaction.

Hewitt takes smug to a whole new level. Not only does he suggest that you host a retreat on blogs for your organization ASAP-complete with a copy of his book for each person-but he also includes an entire chapter comparing the blog revolution to the Protestant Reformation. Nobody has told him that it's rude to proclaim yourself at the center of a massive cultural coup d'etat. But according to Hewitt, he's not arrogant or self-serving at all-in fact, he's altruistically making the world a more democratic place by helping to overthrow the information aristocracy. You should thank him.

Blogs allow individual people to filter, interpret and distribute information. In that way, Hewitt is right-blogs are very democratic enterprises. Bloggers can give voice to an incredibly diverse array of views and even bring to light misdeeds that the mainstream media chooses to ignore. But of course, as in any democracy, you're going to get a few weirdos. It is up to the public to judge whether a blog devoted to Spice Girl sightings, for example, would be worth its time.

In the interest of transparency, let me announce that I am an evil liberal. I do not agree with the basic assumption that the media elite (the major newspapers and news magazines) are scheming to repress all right-wing dissention. I certainly do not hail Fox News as the long-awaited savior of mainstream media (which Hewitt shortens to MSM). If I were reading a book about blogs, as I'd been lead to believe, these views and my politics should not have been a problem. But no, Hewitt repeatedly tells me that his book is not for me.

Here's an example: "Most of America knows that elite journalism is staffed by people who are overwhelmingly way-left-of-center in their politics. If you don't believe that America believes that, or you want to argue over what 'way-left-of-center' means, you have purchased the wrong book. You are still living in the land of the lost and don't want to move, so go buy Al Franken's or Michael Moore's latest and miss the revolution." Actually, Mr. Hewitt, I would like to argue about what "way-left-of-center" means, since it's crucial to your entire point.

For a group that controls both the White House and Congress, the conservatives sure do have their knickers in a twist. Apparently it hasn't occurred to Hewitt and his cronies that the MSM can't be terribly dangerous-after all, it has utterly failed to brainwash the majority of American voters into supporting its tree-hugging, flip-flopping, baby-killing agenda.

Think I was exaggerating his tone a bit with the baby-killing line? Here's more wisdom from our pal Hewitt: "Hire fifty reporters from the Ivy League into the New York Times, Time, or the Washington Post, and 90 percent of those young reporters will arrive carrying roughly the same point of view on, say, the desirability of unlimited abortion rights even through the last trimester." Right. That's like me saying that all Fox News reporters drive to work in gigantic SUVs with NRA bumper stickers and clubbed seals stuffed under the seats.

Hewitt appears to have nothing but contempt for print journalists. Early in the book, Hewitt states, "You have to be very dim indeed to be planning a career as a print journalist these days." Not dim, but perhaps a little crazy. You have to tolerate low wages and demanding and unpredictable work hours. You have to accept that you will get nothing perfect-there will be typos, annoyed readers, five more people you could have talked to. And then there's the knowledge that smug bastards like Hewitt think you lie for a living.

I don't think any journalist today would deny that traditional journalism isn't exactly hunky-dory right now. Yes, newspaper readership is down. Yes, people don't believe everything journalists tell them, if they ever did. Yes, Dan Rather and Jayson Blair did not help. But I also believe that traditional journalists do important work, and that the vast majority of them care deeply about the truth. They do not all deserve to be painted with the same tar. About the issue of whether Kerry spent Christmas of 1968 in Cambodia-an issue that certain bloggers clung to zealously-Hewitt proclaims, "For the first time the MSM had to deal with a legion of genuine ombudsmen and genuine editors, not colleagues in the agenda journalism business." Excuse me? One tiny detail about a war that nearly everyone hated outweighs the millions of legitimate and important details that the MSM has gotten right, day after day, year after year?

Too bad a "genuine editor" didn't do us all a favor and chop off the first hundred pages of this book.