At least, that's what it seems that Slate is hoping for: "The book includes Katie’s unique take on everything from politics to pop culture to her own life, so the night is sure to be interesting. Maybe even messy," writes Slate. Let's hope!

But wait. Put that credit card back in your pocket before buying that $25 ticket.  Slate has a discount offer. "Even better news: Enter the code SLATENYPL to get a $10 discount on your ticket. See you there!" Slate enthusiastically writes.With the money saved, why not buy book and prep your indignation.  Or even better, read Ms. Roiphe's column and use the extra cash to plan an affair over whiskey sours. Get messy!

The event is on October 10. The conversation feels like it has been going on since the early 90's.

In an apparent miscalculation, Newsweek tried to capitalize on their edgy cover by inviting a conversation on Twitter with the suggested hashtag #MuslimRage.

Well, the hashtag caught on, but not for the serious discussion of Middle-Eastern politics and policy that Newsweek no doubt intended. The tweets are mainly borderline offensive jokes and sarcastic references to Muslim culture. However, the tweets are coming fast (and dare we say furiously?), and if even some of those translate into clicks for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, it's probably provoking the opposite of rage from the magazine's infamously attention-seeking Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown.

• Price lists for pro-Putin bloggers and commenters which indicate that some are paid as much as 600,000 roubles (£12,500) for leaving hundreds of comments on negative stories about Putin.

• Plans to pay more than 10m roubles to buy a series of articles about Nashi's annual Seliger summer camp in two popular Russian tabloids.

• Calls for paid Nashi activists to "dislike" anti-regime videos posted on YouTube.

• Ideas for smear campaigns against what one activist calls the "fascist" Russian opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, such as a cartoon video likening him to Hitler and a suggestion someone dress up like the blogger to beg for alms in front of the US embassy.

Anonymous has said the hack, in the works since Spring 2011, was meant to be "a sign of protest" against the Russian government's "actions in the public Internet sphere."

Russians interviwed by the U.K. paper about the hack seem to shrug it off to some degree. Opposition leader Navalny said that Nashi doesn't have "real people" who will freely support the group's cause, "So they pay."

Nashi leader Nikita Borovikov seemed unconcerned: "For several years, I've got used to the fact that our email is periodically hacked [...] I'm a law abiding person, and have nothing to fear of hiding, so I pay no attention."

Paid partisan blogging and trolling are not exclusive to politically-motivated Russian groups. A simple Google search for the term "paid trolls" yields over 71,000 results.

[The Guardian]

The Public Editor column in question sought to ask whether or not the Times should work to aggressively counter the press lines given to them, by writing those counters within the context of a story. This is a poor way to bring up the ongoing debate about where a journalist providing "news context" crosses over into a journalist providing "opinions." Especially when you title your column "Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?" Which sounds less like a public editor column, and more like a particularly unfunny Stephen Colbert segment.

The answer to whether or not the Times should be relentless in its pursuit of truth is "Yes," unless you are the target of that pursuit. Which is why a bunch of Times reporters publicly facepalmed when they read his column. Everyone on Twitter was like "YES!" Some people wrote some legitimately funny takes on it.

Finally, not too long ago, Times' executive editor Jill Abramson filed a response tonight. So eager was the Times to get this response into the open that even the company's head flack made a point of Tweeting it out.

It begins:

Art,

In your blog, you ask “whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge ‘facts’ that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.” Of course we should and we do. The kind of rigorous fact-checking and truth-testing you describe is a fundamental part of our job as journalists.

Which is basically what everyone else said. Why even dignify this? So outrageous isn't the question itself so much as (A) Mr. Brisbane's inability to ask what he ostensibly meant to say and (B) the awesome, pageview-bating headline he put on it to incite the rage of the masses.

Mr. Brisbane is asking whether or not it's a journalist's place to look at something that is clearly and patently untrue—and either question it or note it as untrue—without empirical evidence. The closest he came to clarifying this question wasn't in the first or even the second post on the matter he wrote, but in an interview with Jim Romenesko:

What I was trying to ask was whether reporters should always rebut dubious facts in the body of the stories they are writing.

This depends on whether or not you're the kind of person who sees something that is plainly full of lies and cannot control the urge to publicly identify it as "total bullshit," or if you're the kind of person who says "well, hold on a second, maybe this person in a position of great power with very powerful interests to protect is actually telling us the truth." Most journalists—especially at the New York Times—are the first kind.

Unfortunately, the proliferation of news sources like Fox News and people like James O'Keefe—who employ euphemisms for "objectivity" to a pornographic degree—have made these lines blur a little more over the last decade. Blogs and bloggers also make fundamentalists like Mr. Brisbane—who, as Jack Shafer pointed out, is no slouch as far as journalism goes—get very squirmy about what "objectivity" means. This is the stripe of mindset that thinks that a journalist shouldn't have an opinion about anything, and that this opinon-less zombified state of human living is what constitutes "objectivity." Hence, his question: Does relentless pursuit of the truth constitute something other than journalist's place, like an agenda (of calling 'bullshit' what it is)?

For the most part, however, most practitioners of journalism would agree that erring on the side of skepticism publicly is probably a good idea. The alternative is the kind of lifeless journalism and commitment to archaic and never-quite-ever-actually-realized ideals of objectivity that hasn't helped anyone, let alone the craft or business of journalism.

Some folks, however, continue to thrive on the journalism of a juicy headline—sometimes quite ginned up—intended to make people ragey. Ask Matt Drudge! He's done okay for himself. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear even that was Mr. Brisbane's intent. It may be worth paying less attention to next time.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

"Long" posted blog entries on Kos that appeared to skewer Rand Paul's Democratic opponent in the Kentucky race for the Senate, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway--from an allegedly progressive point of view.

Kubica's attempted psych op did not, to say the least, impress an unabashedly liberal site like Kos:

It goes without saying that Kubica, as a concern troll, is unwelcome at Daily Kos. Daily Kos is a progressive community and its community membership are united by the goal of electing more and better Democrats to public office. While we are tolerant of a wide range of views within the "Big Blue Tent," make no mistake: this site is every bit as blue as it is orange. If Kubica had identified his role with his campaign, he would not have been welcome in the community, so he resorted to deception. Now that we know who he is, he's been banned, per community guidelines.

"Plumbers" burgling an office at Watergate it ain't, but it is at least just one more surreal development in what has already been one of the stranger Senate races in the country.

[Kos]