Blog P.I.

As impatiently anticipated in this space on Tuesday, the Lieberman ‘06 blog has been loosed upon the world. Despite the admonishments of Atrios, as backed up by DavidNYC and other luminaries, the comments are filling up briskly with anti-Joe sentiment. (Albeit nowhere near as fast as Atrios’ own threads.)

Alas, the only real entertainment to be had is in speculating on the layers of identity within the commentariat. Which are paid stooges from the Lieberman campaign, posting deliberately incendiary remarks to make the Lamont campaign look bad? Which are volunteer stooges from the Lamont campaign, posting obviously amateurish incendiary remarks to make the Lieberman campaign look like they’re planting deliberately incendiary remarks? How many different people are posting as “Ann Coulter,” and are they all on the same side?

The site’s design is fairly dreary, and the sense that has characterized the 2006 Lieberman campaign — that of expectations cruelly dashed — is ably captured by the policy of having every post contain a “Read The Full Blog Post” link, even when (as is frequently the case) there is no more blog post to read. Meanwhile, the tireless exuberance of the comment posse is beginning to resemble that of an unruly high-school class, and within a few posts the blog itself had devolved into the very thing Atrios originally predicted: singling out random anonymous commenters as being representative of the Lamont campaign. (The approved neologism for this is nutpicking. I am more or less resigned to it, but am going to hold out for as long as possible in the hope that someone can come up with something equally clever but less overtly anatomical.)

By all rights this should be hilarious, but for some reason it makes me feel sad instead. Perhaps it’s a seasonal thing.