(Hat tip: Ring Lardner)

New York Times Op-It Girl Maureen Dowd’s Wednesday column chronicled the Internet adventures of an Australian model who fought to unmask the anonymous blogger who called her a “skank” and a “ho.”

In discussing her own encounters with the flogosphere, Dowd quoted her BCF (Best Column Friend) Leon Wieseltier, literary editor at The New Republic and frequent star of the “Sentences We Never Finished” feature in The Weekly Standard.

“The velocity and volume on the Web are so great that nothing is forgotten and nothing is remembered,” says Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic. “The Internet is like closing time at a blue-collar bar in Boston. Everyone’s drunk and ugly and they’re going to pass out in a few minutes.”

Here’s my guess: Wieseltier, who’s a gasbag of NStar-esque proportions, has never even seen the inside of a “blue-collar bar in Boston,” never mind been there at closing time.

Inevitable conclusion: Leon Wieseltier should maybe, you know, shut up.

And Maureen Dowd should maybe find some better sources.