Speaker Glenn Richardson: The mad rush by politicians in both parties to embrace bloggers is about over. And he’s just about written them off.

Dick Pettys writes in InsiderAdvantage Georgia about comments that Speaker of the Georgia House made during a press conference earlier this week:

Ask newspaper editors and they’ll tell you that blogging is the future. Ask Glenn Richardson, and he’ll tell you that if it’s the future, it’s got a short shelf life. The Speaker of the Georgia House thinks the mad rush by politicians in both parties to embrace bloggers is about over. And it sounds like he’s just about written them off.

“Those dadgum blog sites. You know what I predict is going to happen? I predict somebody’s going to sue one of those site domains for slander, and somebody’s going to get hit with a big suit because there’s no accountability, and they say and do things about people that are blatantly false.

“If y’all did, you’d get sued in a New York minute ... Somebody’s going to sue ‘em and hit ‘em with enough money ... and somebody is going to say, ‘We’d better be careful with this.’

“We’re brazen now because people will say things ‘cause they know there’s no accountability. There’s no reason for it. It bugs me a little. I see ‘em do it about people who’re private citizens. I accept my role as a public official. They can say I’m bad, dumb and ugly, and truth is a defense.

“I know everybody thinks that’s going to last a while. I don’t believe it’ll last too much longer.”

Richardson said no one has sued bloggers yet because there are no deep pockets behind them. “The reason they sue a newspaper is that they’ve got money.”

But, he said, “sooner or later somebody is going to, because it’s clearly slander in many cases.”