Patternico and his reaction to the LA Times’ columnist revealing him to be a Stalinist for pointing out errors of the paper.

That, my friends, is what we call a good old-fashioned whippin’.

Michael Hiltzik is a columnist for the LA Times. On his blog, sponsored by the paper, he states the following:

Frey has several qualities in common with many other right-wing bloggers who have set themselves up as watchdogs of what they categorize, self-revealingly, as the “mainstream media.” . . . None of these critics appears to be genuinely interested in correcting factual errors or improving this newspaper’s, or any newspaper’s, performance as a journalistic institution, which are certainly legitimate goals. Their main purpose is to hunt down deviations from a political orthodoxy that they themselves define. Their techniques include a promiscuous use of labels as shorthand slurs (”leftist” and “liberal” being, of course, their most popular denigrations). They no doubt find this technique valuable because once they can hang a label on a newspaper or a journalist, they can dispense with anything so fundamental as discussion or argument.

So “right-wing bloggers” use labels so that they can dispense with anything so fundamental as discussion. Because labeling is wrong — unless you are correctly labeling right-wing bloggers, of course. But couldn’t we find a better label that “right-wing blogger”?

(hmmm. Despite what all the other columnists are saying, “right-wing blogger” might not sound ominous enough . . . .wait — I know)

To back up their assertions, they often quote articles selectively, take out of context what they do quote, and ascribe imaginary motivations to reporters and editors, which they then feel free to decry. As any student of history knows, these are tools and techniques that were used to great effect during the Stalinist show trials of the 40s and 50s.

Stalinist. Yes, perfect. Blogging is exactly like Soviet-era show trials.