I have at last achieved some notoriety in the blogosphere. Francis W. Porretto has banned me from his blog.

My offense? I was guilty of the rather pedestrian observation that it was dishonest of him to willfully mischaracterize the New York Times obituary of Ronald Reagan as an "undisguised hit piece," then to use that mischaracterization as the basis of an attack on the integrity of the reporter who wrote the obit and on the journalistic profession in general. As it turns out, Mr. Porretto's blog tolerates attacks on the integrity of others but not on his own integrity. That's his prerogative, but isn't it the sort of policy that, if it were adopted by the mainstream media, would be assaulted in the blogosphere as -- dare I say the word? -- arrogant?

Note to Mr. Porretto: To bone up on the meaning of "undisguised hit piece," read this column by Christopher Hitchens. No Mafia hit man ever pulled off a neater job. Mr. Hitchens is unfair and intemperate -- and possibly not even sober; on the one occasion when I heard him speak, he acknowledged that he had fortified himself with a drink or two too many before facing a presumably hostile Texas A&M audience.

But unlike Mr. Porretto, Mr. Hitchens retains his integrity. Not only does he back his accusations with facts and examples (something Mr. Porretto doesn't deign to do) but he willingly battles the aspersions on his integrity that inevitably follow such a piece. On MSNBC, Mr. Hitchens' unrestrained attack on Reagan reduced Joe Scarborough and Ken Adelman to sputtering rage, demonstrating that even a week of national mourning can be relieved by moments of unintentional hilarity.