Ironic, indeed. The Times' Mark Leibovich notes how the D.C. press is increasingly treating government officials and bureaucrats likes celebrities, feverishly posting trivial updates about members of Obama's team. (Who drinks Diet Coke, who was spotted at an ATM, etc.) And yes, Leibovich is dead on, the Beltway press' standards for news have evaporated in recent years.

The ironic part is when Leibovich pretends it's bloggers who are driving the trend, even though virtually all the examples noted in his piece come from the mainstream press. If anything, bloggers have been openly mocking the media's celebrity-like coverage.

Nonetheless, Leibovich writes:

Are any of these items newsworthy? (It's not as if the country is facing two wars and an economic crisis or anything.). Well, yes, they are — a lot of Web sites, bloggers and Twitterers have deemed these developments so.

And in the print edition of the Times, the pull quote for the article reads:

A Rahm Emanuel sighting at the Safeway? Alert the bloggers.

Nice try, Times. Most bloggers couldn't care less about that kind of nonsense. It's the oh-so-serious elite press that's treating pols like movie stars.

Leave us out of it.

UPDATE: It wasn't bloggers this week who wrote about what kind of handkerchiefs pols are wearing.