Blogging Tories member Dust My Broom has some questions for George Stephenson of the Winnipeg Free Press.

That post got me thinking about an op-ed George penned last week in which he lashed out at conservative bloggers.

WITH the election of the new Conservative government, there is a legion of Internet pundits who, once they stop hyperventilating into paper bags, will be staring transfixed at their computer screens wondering: What now?They comprise that growing wad of computer users who call themselves “citizen journalists,” bloggers by a more common name, who believe their every thought is a treasured gift to the rest of us. They are limited only by cerebral function, motor skills and bandwidth.

While some just post to the Internet pictures of their dogs and details of their lives, those now drawing the most attention have web logs devoted to attacking anything they deem to be liberal. That includes big L liberals, small l liberals and the media in general, which they abbreviate to MSM, Satan’s caddy - mainstream media.

In Canada there are well over 200 of these blogs, with a handful in Manitoba, and most of them have spent much of the past year in a frenzy, attacking the Liberal government every day. True to their antipathy toward the “mainstream” most are dispatches from the fringe with many others way out where the buses don’t run. They are generally blunt, apparently believing that subtlety is for wimps and nuance is some kind of hard-to-spell French word.

Whatever, it’s probably surprising to most people that anyone would actually care what kind of blather was being sent down the digital pipe. After all, who cares what some guy in his pajamas types in the comfort of his mother’s basement?

My word. Talk about generalizing. Conservative bloggers are on the fringe, hate the MSM, live where buses don’t run, don’t understand subtlety and type from the comfort of Ma’s basement clad in pajamas. Well for starters George I don’t own pajamas, so there! I guess I told him eh? Doesn’t George remind you of that strange uncle the family tolerates but tries to politely ignore?

Frankly I don’t think conservative bloggers consider their thoughts to be a treasured gift to society anymore than blowhard big city newspaper scribes do. The difference between bloggers and some big city newspaper scribes is that we don’t need someone telling us what to think. This is the same reason why more and more people are turning to blogs for information. It’s insulting when you read a paper only to be told you’re not capable of forming your own opinion, that you need experts to do it for you. Who is the pretentious one?

But my favourite part is when ole George asks “…who cares what some guy in his pajamas types…?” Obviously you do. If you didn’t care you wouldn’t have written the piece in the first place. Not to mention the fact you poured on the vitriol which is exactly what you accuse conservative bloggers of doing.

Does George feel threatened by the sudden surge in popularity of blogs? You bet he does. And for good reason. Gone are the days when some expert tells people what they should think or feel. Gone are the days when some arrogant windbag flaunts his opinion in the faces of his readers under the pretense that his is the only one that matters because he has the degree to back it up. George is losing his grip on the information monopoly and he doesn’t like it. Well that’s too bad George, suck it up. Times change and society evolves. Welcome to the future.