No Blog Like a Fake Blog

The parody blog purportedly written by Harriet Miers has been a big hit, linked to by bloggers everywhere and the subject of a friendly piece in the New Yorker. Its humor is hit and miss, but what makes it work is that the writer doesn't just make fun of the Supreme Court nominee. Its targets are just as much the narcissism and bad spelling of many personal blogs.

Now it's spawned an imitator, a blog that presents itself as the product of Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor leading the Cheney-Libby-Rove leak investigation that's currently obsessing Washington. Titled "Frog Marching 101," this one lacks the ear and wit of "Harriet Miers." There's a days-until-indictments countdown clock and a doctored photo of Karl Rove being carted away in handcuffs. Other entries are even more transparently standard-issue liberal blog criticism of President Bush.

The success of the Harriet Miers blog is bound to breed further imitators. Blogging is anonymous, meaning it can be pseudonymous, too. As more and more public officials take to blogging themselves, phony blogs will become a bigger and bigger concern for public officials and candidates who'll have to explain them away. Not all of them will be as obviously bogus as the Harriet Miers blog.