Job title: Blog Advisor!

Peter Daou signs off over at Salon, as he leaves to serve Hillary Clinton as "a blog advisor to facilitate and expand her relationship with the netroots." Take note, bloggers! That's a new job description, and you qualify! Blog Advisor, facilitating and expanding relationships with the netroots.

Is it too late to complain about the word "netroots"? It should be two words. I'm seeing troots too much. Or could we just shorten it to troots, which is cute? Cute troots.

Wait. Back to the subject. I keep meaning to quote some of Daou's statement, but it's boring me terribly for some reason. Does something happen to a blogger when he goes on the payroll of a politician? Don't you read bloggers because they're independent? Once they're bound to a specific candidate, what the hell are they?

They are Blog Advisor, facilitating and expanding relationships with the netroots. But we bloggers are prickly, feisty characters. You can't facilitate and expand with me.

Okay, focus:

The past few months have been a challenging period in the growth of the blogosphere, with the YearlyKos convention marking the “arrival” of the blogs as a political force (at least in the eyes of many mainstream reporters and political operatives). But YearlyKos has also touched off a series of harsh attacks against the netroots and specifically Daily Kos and its founder Markos Moulitsas. As blog influence continues to grow, we can expect more intense fire directed at the blogosphere by those who have a vested interest in undermining it.

One of the standard practices of blog detractors is to use the comments of the anonymous few to tarnish the genuine passion and sincerity of the many millions who log on to express their views and to connect with other denizens of the Internet. The “angry left” is a stereotype used to pigeonhole left-leaning bloggers, but the truth is that far from being a bastion of ideological rigidity, the blog world is a hard-hitting and free-wheeling discussion among Americans of all political stripes. These attacks won’t weaken the community; on the contrary, this nascent power base is only beginning to make its presence felt. It will reach fuller potential with the participation of Democratic leaders and responsible reporters.

That's turgid and in need of translation. I'm thinking it's a rephrasing of his pitch to the Clinton campaign about why they need him. Kos and his ilk are a threat, storming the gates, and they need someone who can deal with them, talk to them, tame them.

IN THE COMMENTS: They're playing with the "troots." Example: The troots? You can't handle the troots!

MORE: Amba makes a key point: "'Troots' would be a construction exactly analogous to 'blog' (ne-troots, we-blog)." I kept trying to think of other examples of forming a word like that, and the only thing I could think of was "shrooms."