Taking His Ball Blog And Going Home

I actually ran across the NPR report about Jeffrey Rosen's gossip piece and the impact of it on the debate over Sonia Sotomayor on Sunday morning, and when I heard this I nearly broke my radio:

But its author, the noted legal writer Jeffrey Rosen, says he's been burned by the episode, too — enough that he's swearing off blogging for good.

"It was a short Web piece," Rosen says now, sounding a little shell-shocked. "I basically thought of it as a blog entry". . . .

Above all, Rosen says he's drawn a lesson from how his initial essay was treated by people of both ideological stripes. He won't be blogging any more. He wants to spend more time with the material before hitting "send."

Yes, the medium of blogging made him use anonymous sources to smear a qualified Supreme Court nominee. The darn macros in the publishing tool just cross out all of the named sources, at least on Blogger and Wordpress. It's just like my friend Steve an associate of mine once said: "Jeffrey Rosen wants to slander people after thoughtful consideration, but the publishing tools he uses just force him into rash decision-making!"

Everyone knows the difference between Jeffrey Rosen the lowly blogger and Jeffrey Rosen the self-evidently esteemed writer on legal issues. The former engages in character assassination; the latter, in very deliberate and keen-eyed character assassination. Good to be rid of the former.

As Glenn points out, Rosen actually published the hit piece on Sotomayor not as a blog, but as a stand-alone article, much like writers do on the websites of major publications every single day. Maybe if we're lucky, Rosen will vow not to write on the Internet ever again! Or write, period!

...Meanwhile, Jon Chait's defense of his colleague Rosen is pathetic.