Norman Mailer is taking his turn over at The Huffington Post, and he is blogging idiocy. He writes (with emphasis added):

I have a few thoughts I can certainly not prove, but the gaffe over the Michael Isikoff story in Newsweek concerning the Koran and the toilet is redolent with bad odor. Who, indeed, was Isikoff's supposedly reliable Pentagon source? One's counter-espionage hackles rise. If you want to discredit a Dan Rather or a Newsweek crew, just feed them false information from a hitherto reliable source.  You learn that in Intelligence 101A.

Counter-espionage often depends on building "reliable sources." You construct such reliability item by secret item, all accurate. That is seen by the intelligence artists as  necessary expenditure. It gains the source his credibility. Then, you spring the trap.

As for the riots at the other end, on this occasion, they, too, could have been orchestrated. We do have agents in Pakistan, after all, not to mention Afghanistan.

Obviously, I can offer no proof of any of the above. There still resides, however, under my aging novelist's pate a volunteer intelligence agent, sadly manque. He does suggest that the outcome was too neat. It came out too effectively for one side, one special side....

What is it about politics that makes some people insane? I mean, not just passionate or determined, but wacko. Yes, history has shown that people will go to great lengths to obtain and maintain power, but why are people so willing to float these bizarre ideas based only on their imagination?

Arianna provides the teaser to this post with the question: "I’ve been asked many times over the past week why would people who already have so many platforms for expressing their views -- books, movies, columns, talk shows -- bother to blog?" (Does this remind anyone of John Stewart's quip, "Kudos to MSNBC for using the power of blogs to finally give voice to the already voiced"?]

The answer, according to Arianna:

Today Norman Mailer gives public voice to what many of our contributors have told me privately:  When something happens to which you want to -- have to -- respond, there is nothing like blogging. You don’t have to wait for the New York Times to run your op-ed, you don’t have to drive to a TV studio and get into make up, and you certainly don’t have to wait until your book is between hard covers or your movie hits the screens. You can blog about it… unfiltered, uncensored, unedited.

Newbie bloggers should understand that when you don't have another person as an editor, the need for self-censorship increases. Then again, Norman Mailer is way past the point of worrying about a little thing like being outrageous. But he's got me thinking: what if Michael Isikoff put him up to this?

UPDATE: Ann wonders whether Mailer is spoofing blogging. In a word, no. That looks like classic Norman Mailer to me.

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