Increasingly, we are surrounded by people who write and speak to a single constituency - their own.

The above comes (via Glenn Reynolds) from John Hawkins, who asks what's changed since Cal Thomas's more favorable view of the blogosphere a couple of months ago.

Is Cal Thomas really as peeved at "the blogosphere" as he seems? Or did his wrath originate with his "friend" Arianna Huffington? Here's Thomas, writing about her newly announced blog, on May 2:

They are self-absorbed, face-lifting, Botox-injecting, breast-augmenting, GOP-bashing, serial-marrying, Democrat-voting, Michael Moore-loving and fornication-practicing as a divine right … if they believed in the divine.

Barbra Streisand has her own Web page. Anyone can visit it for the liberal line. Or they can read the New York Times editorial page. Why do we need another liberal blog?

Arianna, you used to be a conservative? Maybe it's the water in Hollywood that changed you.

Back to Thomas's latest rant remarks on blogs:

With blogs, we do not know if what we read is true. For most blogs, no editor checks for factual errors and no one is restrained from editorializing. The Big Media sometime are guilty of these same shortcomings, but at least with them there is a presumption in favor of accuracy and fairness, plus there's a way to shame them and occasionally force a correction if they mess up. Blogs have no checks and balances.

I'm wondering. (Just wondering, mind you.) Could it be possible that Cal Thomas was promised a slot at the Huffington blog? For years he has shared the stage with Arianna at JWR (although she doesn't appear to be at JWR's current lineup) and as recently as May 2 he refered to her as his "friend."

Or might he working in collusion with his old friend, in a sort of joint effort to protect turf? This might explain his unrestrained editorial ranting against those who engage in unrestrained editorial ranting.

How suddenly convenient to have Arianna as a scapegoat!

Earlier this week (just two days before Thomas's latest column), I tried to sound the alarm about the Huffington blog:

I don't know what's going to happen, but I refuse to be judged or tarred in any way by the content or conduct of this newly spun, highly provocateurish blog.

Might there even be a joint (if covert) Huffington-Thomas "blogosmear" campaign? There's no way to prove it, of course, and it's deniable as hell, but I think Iowa Voice may be onto something:

....when bloggers unite in a sort of "Associated Press" type of venture (like Pajamas Media is planning), then THAT is when the MSM is going to get a run for it's money. More resources will become available to bloggers as time goes on, and that is when bloggers will make the true transformation to being full-blown members of the media.

That is, I think, the problem facing the MSM, and why we are seeing an increase in attacks on blogs and bloggers. They are trying to discredit us before we get a serious foothold and start to do real "damage" to their business.

All the more so when legacy "enemies" face an outside threat.

My suspicions may of course be very wrong, and as is so often the case, I really do hope I am wrong. And it's tough to analyze this because, in Thomas's words, "we do not know if what we read is true."

If those who can't beat the blogosphere are now joining it in the hope of discrediting it, it's laughable, because this isn't a zero sum-style barrel of apples waiting to be spoiled by a few "bad ones." It's a vast playing field as infinite as the number of players.

MORE: Artificial fluffery and puffery are nothing new in the blogosphere. (Nor, apparently, is Huffery.)