With the Roger Stone story slowly wrapping up (hint: more to come), it's time for the Festivus-like Airing of Grievances. Today's edition concerns our friends at the MSM blogs; and let me start out with the observation that y'all are lame.

Yes, Daily Politics, I'm looking at you. You too, Capitol Confidential. No, not you, Azi. Hi, Jay. Hi, Liz. Hi, whatshisname.

Let's recap: over the last few weeks, Daily Gotham and The Albany Project uncovered an entire sleaze campaign against Governor Spitzer being run by someone employed by Joe Bruno. Now, ordinarily, you'd think that would be a big deal - real blogs, like Open Left and Digby, certainly did.

Y'all ran stories, complete with frigging video, of a frigging barbecue hosted by a republican state senator somewhere, presumably on the mistaken impression that anyone but yourselves gives a flying fuck. We owned you on that story - owned. You, meanwhile, continued to print the lamest imaginable denials about this from people who were lying to you, whom you had to have known were lying to you.

Lameness.

Of course, this isn't new, and goes to the very heart of the general lameness of MSM blogs: most of them completely ignore actual, real blogs, preferring instead to pretend-play that they're bloggers. That's why they usually only feature content from, gasp!, other MSM - the same tired process stories that actual real people are so sick and tired of. Why is it, do you think, that "journalist" has become such a dirty word? It's not because people don't like or want carefully researched stories about their government - it's because people are tired of the steaming bullshit you and yours pass off as news. It's because people are tired of being fed the lame-ass stenography you think matters.

Ooooh, a barbecue! How awesome!

Seriously, how dumb do you think the people are? Not just people, but the people?

We were able to write about this and get to the heart of the email and web site campaign not because we're gifted with magic underwear of the kind you seemingly possess, dear journos, but because we did what is known as "research". You know, like signing up with one of those sites and getting emails from others. Simple, really, and considering that you actually get paid for this, the same idea could have occurred to you. You also could have thought of checking the header info on those emails, sweetnesses. Or about doing some thinking on how that list came together, eh?

And so on and so forth. The people of New York still don't know the full extent of this story, because y'all and your print-side cousins don't follow the news when we get there first. Careful, your status anxiety is showing.

But oh no, won't they now freeze out those pesky bloggers from linkage after they've been called out?

Hahaha!

Let me point something out here: ever since Liz took over The Daily Politics, we have had exactly zero links (that I'm aware of) from there to the Daily Gotham. We've gotten one link ever from Capitol Confidential. We can't get frozen out any more than we already are. That's kind of unfortunate, because not only is Daily Gotham older than Daily Politics, it also ranks higher. Check Technorati. This comes, would be my guess, from the inability of hoity-toity bronto-journos to accept that the laws of the game in the blogging space were written by dirty hippies like us before they even got here. Let me spell it out for you: it's called a B-L-O-G, not a N-E-W-S-P-A-P-E-R. Look, blog, four letters, newspaper, nine; network, not newsprint.

While I'm at it, let me also point out the astonishing fact that Capitol Confidential didn't know about Rochester Turning, arguably one of the best blogs in the entire state, until very recently. RT, meanwhile, has owned the MSM on a good number of Bruno stories - check this. Let's not even talk about the smaller blogs, many of whom do fantastic reportage on highly specialized areas and who, for all that the bronto-"bloggers" know or care, do not exist.

Long story short: if you want real political news in New York, check out the blogs. The real blogs. Not the bronto-"blogs".