Both the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web column and the WSJ editorial page today refer to the Wilson-Plame scandal as a “kerfuffle.” Both dismiss it with extreme arrogance and blame the left for all the noise about nothing.

Needless to say, there’s very little said about who committed the misdeed and why. Like Instapundit, they are bewildered and confused about it.

Kerfuffle is certainly an unusual word, and I would suggest that Best of the Web writer James Taranto is almost certainly working in tandem with the WSJ editorial writers to send out the same message — it’s just the pesky and irresponsible liberals trying to get attention. Nothing to take seriously. Taranto refers to it as a leftist “food fight.”

Looking at Taranto’s acerbic prose, I have to admire him. He knows how to make those he opposes look like utter idiots, no matter what they do. Similarly, he artfully makes Republicans look good, again no matter what they do. His ability to insult and sneer, yet at the same time retain a patina of civility and wit, is something I look at with a true sense of wonder. And fear. He is like an Ann Coulter with a functional brain. And that’s a lethal combination — brute, blind prejudice and the intelligence to pass it off as legitimate.

Have to run, but one day I’ll have more to say about the WSJ editorial board and what a peculiar and evil phenomenon it is.

Update, from a well-read reader:
Main Entry: ker·fuf·fle
Pronunciation: k&r-‘f&-f&l
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of carfuffle, from Scots car- (probably from
Scottish Gaelic cearr wrong, awkward) + fuffle to become disheveled
Date: 1946
chiefly British : DISTURBANCE; FUSS