MORE BLOGGER JOURNALISM: Stefan Sharkansky interviewed Amiri Baraka, the New Jersey Poet Laureate who wrote a dumb and offensive poem about the World Trade Center attacks (and the mythical 4,000 jews who didn’t show up for work that day). The results are on his blog.

UPDATE: Josh Chafetz emails this link to a piece from last year’s New Republic on Baraka. Lesson for New Jersey: Appoint a guy like this to a public position, and you’re sure to be embarrassed. It should have been obvious from the beginning. What were they thinking?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Maybe they figured they could always count on Matthew Purdy to give Baraka a free pass on his racism in the New York Times.

ONE MORE: Geitner Simmons has some interesting observations.