If it weren't for those meddlesome bloggers, Sarah Palin might have become the vice president of these United States. Instead, though, she was run back to Wasilla on a rail of unfounded speculation created by the laptoparazzi in their dank, underground abodes. Palin joined the ranks of her fellow sports reporters Rick Reilly, Bob Costas, and Dan Shaughnessy when she told FOX's Greta Van Susteren, "I'm going to characterize them as those bloggers in their parents' basement just talking garbage." Well put. But how could Palin know the exact location of these evildoers' hideouts? Perhaps she's been collecting intelligence from two particular conservative cognoscenti.

Tucker Carlson

November 8, 2006
"Bloggers sitting in their basement, mom's basement in their under shorts, banging this stuff out on laptops…"

August 3, 2007
"If on the off chance a Democrat was not elected president in 2008, a Republican won, what do you think would happen? Do you think they'd leave mom's basement and take to the streets and there would be some revolution to the bloggers, or what would they do?"

(On the movement to get Al Gore to run for President), October 10, 2007
"I think it's probably nine unemployed bloggers living in mom's basement high on Ben and Jerry's…"

Glenn Beck

April 26, 2007
"Before all the liberal bloggers who still live in mom's basement get all bent out of shape…"

(on bloggers), August 21, 2007
"I mean, they all live in their mom's basement anyway, so what difference does that make?"

March 11, 2008
"Now, I want you to know I bring this up not because anybody cares about some failed blogger, you know, that's in the basement of mom's house with a passion for shift-F7."

September 3, 2008
"… basement bloggers who are in the basements of their mom or dad's home … "

Palin isn't the only one in the McCain camp calling out bloggers on their living habits. Back in July, McCain surrogate (and friend of Gelf) Michael Goldfarb compared the New York Times to a blogger "sitting at home in his mother’s basement and ranting into the ether between games of Dungeons and Dragons."

This is especially interesting, since Goldfarb wrote his comments from the official John McCain blog (which seems to have been deactivated). Come to think of it, both Carlson and Beck have blogs of their own as well. I suppose the only option for Sarah Palin now is to become a male in her 30s, wear pajama-like clothing, subsist on bright-orange corn puffs and bright-yellow carbonated beverages, carry 20-sided dice, and forswear sexual activity.

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