According to a growing body of experts, being online can be an addiction:

If you're a blogger, you could soon find yourself labeled with the newest mental disorder: Internet Addiction Disorder.

IAD has actually been proposed for inclusion as a psychiatric diagnosis in the next issue of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).

Writing in the new issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Dr. Jerald J. Block, M.D., said that excessive internet and computer usage should be labeled a mental disease, as it has all of the components of a compulsive-impulsive disorder....

This latest revelation comes from psychologist Dr. Helen Smith, who asks a very pertinent question:

Shouldn't The New York Times be notified that rather than successes, these bloggers are sick addicts?

In an interview with Newsbusters' Matthew Sheffield, Karl Rove points out that liberal bloggers far outnumber conservative bloggers -- a situation he wants to change:

...a lot of people on the right have got active lives and are doing other things and the idea of spending a lot of time on the internet and taking their talents and displaying them there is not something they really do. But I'd like to see more of it, very creative conservatives using the internet for those purposes.

That's why I don't expect to see much time devoted to blogging addiction in the New York Times.

OTOH, if conservatives take Karl Rove's advice to heart and start spending a lot of time on line, then maybe there will be more discussion of this "disease."

Until then, blogging addiction will remain a disease of liberalism!