That's what reporters do. They want quick answers. They want the thumbnail understanding. They're like boxers -- I keep thinking of Apollo Creed in Rocky being coached to "stick and move, stick and move" -- that's reporting. Give it a zing. It's black, or white. Give a nod to complexity, but then dismiss it by not going there.

Case in point: Today's Washington Post article on -- get ready -- "the Angry Left." (Yes, that is a capitalized phrase.)

SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. -- In the angry life of Maryscott O'Connor, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her president is still George W. Bush. The sun has yet to rise and her family is asleep, but no matter; as soon as the realization kicks in, O'Connor, 37, is out of bed and heading toward her computer.

Out there, awaiting her building fury: the Angry Left, where O'Connor's reputation is as one of the angriest of all. "One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs, as she wonders what she should scream about this day.

What follows is what seems like an attempt at humorous caricature, painting a picture of a madwoman smoking a cig while trying to think up the most horrible awful thing to blog about. I don't know Maryscott, but I know her writing, and some of it is very powerful. Maybe she's really like this.

But doesn't the reporter -- David Finkel, fans -- really have any interest in exploring why?

The man completely misses the story here. He gets off on a shallow, mocking portrait of a day in the life of a blogger, and doesn't see -- or simply ignores -- that he's seeing a citizen trying to deal with today's politics, that blogging is citizen publishing, that millions of people are blogging.

"But that's not his assignment," you say?

Therein lies the problem. Because what we have here is a dismissive article that uses exaggeration and selective observation (like focusing on the most inane comments made in discussion threads, while ignoring anything in depth) to undercut the credibility of a person who's been made the sacrificial goat of the day to slay the insurgent communications medium -- blogging -- while selling soap (or, on the web page I'm looking at now, HP brand servers and equity loans).

Not convinced? Then consider how the article moves straight from the cartoonish portrayal of Maryscott's "Angry Left" rage to this:

To what, effect, though? Do the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to Daily Kos, who sign their comments with phrases such as "Anger is energy," accomplish anything other than talking among themselves? The founder of Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, may have a wide enough reputation at this point to consult regularly with Democrats on Capitol Hill, but what about the heart and soul of Daily Kos, the other visitors, whose presence extends no further than what they read and write on the site?

How about the 125,000 or so daily visitors to Eschaton? Or the thousands who visit Rude Pundit, the Smirking Chimp or My Left Wing, which is O'Connor's Web site?

Put another way, can one person sitting alone in a living room, typing her fingertips numb on a keyboard, make a difference?

One might ask the same question about a reporter writing a puff-slash piece in a newspaper that, once upon a time, actually reported on the misdeeds of a president and was largely responsible for the ending of Nixon's dark reign. But no -- better to mock people who get worked up over crooks in the White House.

Thus the stooge is set up and dismissed. Sorry, Maryscott. It's your anger that is news. All that stuff that makes you angry? Not worth getting all worked up over. After all, what's the point?

As for the keyboard, it is where O'Connor finished her evolution from lost soul to angry soul, beginning with that very first rant, which concluded with a wish that Bush, "after contracting incurable cancer and suffering for protracted periods of time without benefit of medication," go to hell.

She wrote it, sent it to Daily Kos, saw it appear online, watched as people responded to it -- and learned something about the effect of being both heartfelt and vicious. "It's impactful," she says. "It gets attention."

And the writer treats it as if this were the end in and of itself.

Meanwhile, around her, the other parts of her life go on: the two-bedroom rental, the car that got egged at the grocery store because of the bumper stickers, the family.

No further mention of the eggs. No. Because Maryscott's anger is the news -- raging on the net is the news -- not the violence she's experienced from other angry people out there -- violence that, if it were directed at the police, would have landed the bubbas in jail. No mention of the higher standards and expectations implied by such anger. Nor, as Liza mentions, any understanding of the belief "in the goodness of Humanity" that serves as the flip side to the nickel portrait offered.

It's a certain myopia that we have in the mainstream media these days. Their agnosticism when it comes to facts leads us to rather ridiculous articles like this one -- which serve to describe, define, dismiss and move on from people who dissent from the pre-packaged national agenda.

Where does this come from? I suspect it's part corporate agenda, part editorial spinelessness and part reporter ego. But mainly I think it comes from an institutional blindness to what blogging and citizen media are really about. What the newspaper man has done is put up for ridicule an American citizen who does not passively sit on the couch and snooze through the news while waiting for the real shows. By daring to publish, Maryscott, as representative of all "Angry Left" bloggers, is given the treatment as a rival for readers' affections.

Maryscott writes that Mr. Finkel refused to use her bathroom during his 12-hour-long visits. Now that's something that could be worked up into a caricature, and then used to describe, define and dismiss his reporting.

Now let's move on.

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media girl also blogs at other places.