When I say I’ve never read “War and Peace,” believe me, I mean it. But when really smart book reviewers say they haven’t read blogs, I’m a little astonished.

Re: the new book by the blogger formerly known as Wonkette, P.J. O’Rourke in his Washington Post review says:

Ana Marie Cox made her name writing a political blog, Wonkette.com. I’ve never seen it. As far as I can tell, no one has. Admitting reading political blogs is like admitting watching daytime TV. Yet somehow, as with “Oprah,” everyone knows all about Wonkette. It’s nasty, smart, quick and fun. 

P.J., I’ve seen you talk more than once at Brookings — you must see beyond the grey heads that surround you up front and notice all those fresh faces near the back of the room. We’ve all read Wonkette. And, when we were in junior high and high school, we all watched Oprah when we got home from school. That, or Ricki Lake or Press Your Luck. We had no choice. That’s what the babyboomers offered our generation for entertainment. And, P.J., remember when you wrote for Rolling Stone? The demographic that its publisher now strives for, I’m betting, reads Wonkette (at least those of us based in D.C.).

O’Rourke’s analysis goes on to illustrate more of his apparent bias toward youth:

The people in Dog Days expend so much energy on instant-messaging, text-messaging, message-forwarding and such that it’s no wonder they are too exhausted to have anything to say. In place of dialogue, Cox introduces chunks and lumps of interchanges just as they appear on LED screens. The result is a convincing argument that electronics provide a mode of expression falling between graffiti tags and gerbil squeaks. 

I don’t know how old all of P.J.’s 3 kids are (one was born in 2003), but they’ve got a lot of work to do.

Christopher Buckley, in his NY Times book review, while loving Dog Days, also went out of his way to mention his “hip to be clueless” take on blogs: “I don’t spend much time in the old blogosphere myself, and to be honest hadn’t clicked onto Wonkette until now,” he wrote. “[I]f this sparkly, witty - occasionally vicious - little novel is any indication of Wonkette’s talent, then Cox ought to log out of cyberspace and start calling herself Novelette.”

LOL. I guess book reviewers only understand books. They must be shaking in their boots now that books are going online faster than you can say, “I haven’t read a blog.”