The desperate delusion that the debunking of the CBS Killian memos was somehow started by “the White House” is taking hold in the fever swamps of the left; here’s the latest example: Spinning the blogosphere. (Hat tip: Molly.)

It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know quite what happened, but it seems highly plausible to me that the White House is communicating with bloggers to spin the news. We already know that the White House’s Internet Director thinks that blogs are pretty important. Equally, I’d be very surprised if people in the Democratic party aren’t communicating with some bloggers in order to try to get their spin across (if they aren’t, they’re bad at their job). As Kieran said a couple of days ago, there is a mythology of the blogger that sees him (or more rarely, her) as a lone hero speaking truth to power (or the “New York Times” as the best local approximation). The reality is murkier. To the extent that blogs help set the agenda for the media, pols have an incentive to spin the blogs, just as they have good reason to spin reporters. Blogs aren’t critiquing the system from outside - they’re increasingly part of the system. Expect more of this over time, not less.

After the left failed miserably to refute allegations that the CBS memos are forgeries, we’re seeing them try to spin in two directions at the same time: the faking of documents to influence a Presidential election is either 1) no big deal, or 2) an evil scheme of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

And according to TIME Magazine’s latest press release, they may be joining the denizens of the fever swamps; one of the headlines in their upcoming issue is “Bush Campaign Keeping Close Eye on Blogs, Using Them To Mainline Information to the G.O.P. Faithful.”

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