The Strange Vexations

of the Aerie Dwellers.

Sandwiched in among dozens of Daily Dish posts by Patrick Appel, Chris Bodenner (whose Friday holiday tune selection was somehow amazingly also too Tom Waits' "Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis"), Andrew Sprung and Conor Friedersdorf, one finds that some sort of kerfuffle has broken out between Ann Althouse and the Andrew Sullivan Collective.

A Daily Dish reader put it this way...

If Newbusters is going to be give The Dish a hard time for openly using underbloggers, they'd better also go after most every op-ed columnist at this country's major papers. For example, the Times illustrious Nick Kristof almost always uses an assistant or two for help with research, editing, and idea formulation. I've only ever seen this acknowledged on his blog; he has perhaps mentioned it in a column, but it is neither acknowledged regularly within or permanently along-side his columns, which is a notable difference in comparison to Andrew, Chris, and you. I say this not to pick on Kristof, but merely to point out a high-profile and Pulitzer Prize-winning example. Andrew is far and away more open about the assistance he receives than are most, if not all, opinion leaders.

"Underblogging"?
"Ghostblogging"?
Assistants who "help with research, editing, and idea formulation"?

Do these strange words have anything to do with

Ghost Dogging?

Or spirit leveling?

Or maybe

The Ghost and Mr. Chickening?

I am just a simple, unfrozen caveman blogger, unfamiliar with the big city ways of Real Bloggers.

I have a fanny pack of Oban, some interstitial moments between units of grocery-paying work and a lovingly-maintained diesel-powered laptop.

My assistant is a driftcat who very often does not try to avenge herself for some imaginary slight by peeing on the exact spot where I was just sitting.

I do not understand one thing these people are saying.