THE DUMBNESS OF THE WHALE/Washington Post edition: We hadn't read The Huffington Post in some time. Yesterday, when we went there, we remembered why.

Until recent decades, the public discourse was maintained by a carefully picked "elite"--the Edward R. Murrow crowd. Regular rubes weren't allowed to take part in these august discussions.

At yesterday's Huffington Post, we began to remember why.

No, it really doesn't make sense to report on "rumors"--or to cry, weep, sob and complain when the subject of your "rumors" tells you that you'll have to stop. (For the most part, even the mainstream press corps doesn't report on "rumors"--for example, by telling us how many weeks the "rumors" have been in circulation.) And Paul Begala's post was simply the work of a new, degraded man--a person who has begun to talk way down to the crowd. (In the past, that wasn't his way.) Meanwhile, did we say, just yesterday, that elite criticism of Palin has often been designed to tag her as "trailer trash?" Those kinds of elites are at HuffPo too, we saw when we read this sad, inane post. Headline: "Reading the Pictures: Palin Proud To Be Trash."

Let's face it--we're all Sean Hannity now! At yesterday's HuffPo, we saw one of the largest collections of fruits and nuts we've ever seen all in one can.

But let's postpone our review of that mess till tomorrow. For today, let's look at a bit of work from Murrow's elite successors. Let's start with Gene Robinson, insisting today that up has been thoroughly down.

Why did Palin decide to resign? Like Robinson, we don't know. Unlike Robinson, we won't pretend that every part of last Friday's speech was "literally nonsensical"--though some parts plainly were. This morning, the Post begins to catch up on its reporting, discussing the string of ethics complaints with which Palin has been deluged. Is the nuisance of that deluge part of the reason Palin is leaving office? We have no way of knowing. But her statement on that subject wasn't "literally nonsensical," so Robinson--always a hack among hacks--pretends it was never said.

Meanwhile, Robinson seems sure of one other thing: The criticism of Palin hasn't been sexist/elitist. Or if it has been, it won't be discussed by a great man like he. In Robinson's format, Palin has kept tricking fine men of his class into getting painted as sexist/elitist. Or something like that. This is what he says:

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ROBINSON (7/7/09): The thing is, Palin's unsuitability for high public office has been obvious all along. Tina Fey got it right; the rest of us were far too reluctant to state plainly that the emperor, or empress, has no clothes.

There are basically two reasons the political class and the commentariat continue to speak and write about Palin as if she were a substantial figure whose presence on the national stage is anything but a cruel, unfunny joke. The first is fear--not of Palin and her know-nothing legions, but of being painted as elitist and sexist.

From the beginning, Palin has been a master at maneuvering her critics into this trap.
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Clever Palin! She kept tricking the Murrow Elite, leading them into that trap! Robinson goes on to cite an example where Palin did cry wolf--where she did complain about elitism without a serious basis. (Palin's logic is often weak or non-existent.) But he forgets to note the other instances, where the complaint is correct.

Unlike Robinson's poor misused commentariat, we were never "reluctant" to state the obvious--Palin was a horrible candidate, perhaps the worst candidate ever at the presidential level. But then, we also didn't have much trouble spotting the actual sexism and elitism exhibited by some of Robinson's crowd.