Yesterday, in his infinite nice guy-ness, Scott Van Pelt hosted Chris on his ESPN radio program. You can listen to that audio here:

Yes, unfortunately, Mitch Albom was on Van Pelt’s show before Chris, which left Moat-ram in the unenviable position of responding to Albom’s weird thoughts on bloggers, which, if you listened to that audio above, you heard. If you’d rather just read it, first of all, your mother would be proud of you, and second, here it is:

“Bloggers can essentially basically be anyone with a computer. And anyone with a computer does not belong on the level any more than I should just be able to to arrest somebody you know because I decided to, versus being a police officer. Or do somebody’s taxes because I decided to, versus going to accounting school. [...] At least in my case and a lot of the people that are from my era and I’ve been in this close to three decades now, we went to school for this. We trained for this. I have a Master’s degree from Columbia. I learned certain rules about what is journalism and what isn’t”

(You know how, sometimes, we bloggers get a little too angry? In the heat of the computer laptop, we don’t temper our thoughts the way we would in normal conversation? You know how Van Pelt wants to have reasonable dialogue on this matter? I’m warning you right now: That’s not going to happen here. Ready? Proceed.)

First of all, Mitch, you tiny, coiffed waif, it’s good to know that your metaphors are about as well thought-out in free verse as they are in the gawd-awful, “Moral Orel” columns you churn out once a week or so. (That’s quite a workload you have there. Come over to a blogger’s basement some time. We’ll show you how to do 1,600 in one morning.) People do their own taxes all the time, friendo. I know your ivory tower and the constant glare of Sauron’s Eye prevent you from seeing how we hobbits live and work, but most of us don’t spend a bunch of money to have someone do our taxes. We use TurboTax. I would suggest you try it, but you hate computers.

Second of all, Mitch, congrats on your degree from Columbia, but even Andy Bernard is blushing.

Third of all, Mitch, I’m sure Columbia and all your friends in the business and all your 30 years of practicing journalism were extremely proud of you when you MADE UP A COLUMN OUT OF THIN AIR. Oh yeah. You thought we forget about that, didn’t you, Mitch. That’s another thing you didn’t know about hobbits. We never forgets:

In 2005, Albom was suspended from the Detroit Free Press for pre-writing and submitting an article about an event that didn’t occur. In a column printed April 3, Albom described two former Michigan State basketball players, both now in the NBA, attending an NCAA Final Four semifinal game on Saturday. The players told Albom they planned to attend, and Albom, filing Friday before the game, wrote as if the players were there, including that they wore Michigan State green. But the players’ plans changed and they never attended.

He issued an apology regarding his misreporting that the players attended the game but never apologized for fabricating particular descriptions.

Mitch Albom went to Columbia. I went to IU. But before that, I went to Assumption High School, where on the first day my teacher, Ms. King, told me the number one rule about journalism: “What you write must be the truth.” (The number two rule: “If you miss deadlines, I will hate you.”)

Either Assumption High School has a more rigorous and ethical journalistic curriculum than Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, or somewhere along the line Mitch Albom decided that it was OK to lie. Then, after the lie, and after he miraculously kept his job because he’s Mitch Albom and he writes very sad, very important books for the illiterate-housewife demographic, he decides, you know what? I’ll lecture bloggers about responsibility on ESPN radio. I won’t make any sense, and no one will take me seriously because I committed the gravest sin a journalist can commit, but I’ll do it anyway. I’m Mitch Albom, bitch.

Now, where is my tax servant? Sauron’s Orc army isn’t going to re-finance itself.