Wall Street Journal and the Fools and Imbeciles

Joseph Rago is associate features editor for the Wall Street Journal. On December 20 he subtitled his attack on bloggers with "Written by fools to be read by imbeciles." Hugh Hewitt had him on the radio to defend his inflammatory words, but he wouldn't. See the transcript. And Hugh's blog entry. A short summary: Rago doesn't think he has to defend what he wrote. Hewitt quotes an emailer:

He [Rago] doesn't seem to understand that you have to defend the things you write. The only real check on the power of the press these days is for non-journalists to have a voice. They might be impolite, vulgar or partisan (as if journalists aren't), but they do much to fulfill the intent of the First Amendment of assuring not only reporting of facts those in power don't want to get out (the press having become itself a monolithic power), but by engaging in robust debate over the issues of the day. We had lost most of that, but we're starting to regain it because of the blogosphere.

Shorter summary: Rago can't defend himself. I find this ironic because the first blog I ever discovered was "Best of the Web" by James Taranto on the Wall Street Journal's free website OpinionJournal.com. Taranto is Rago's coworker and is a fool, according to Rago.