Wes Wolfe. At left is one of the beers he had the foresight to grab before the bar closed.

Having Wesley Donehue pipe up about Nikki Haley on roll call voting reminded me of something. Wesley’s the guy who arranged for the Blogger’s Row table at the Silver Elephant banquet a couple of weeks back.

And there was something that happened that night that I failed to mention.

The bloggers’ table had all modern conveniences (even though I had trouble connecting with my laptop and had to borrow Wesley’s for my live-blogging, while he used his iPad). Food was served, which I suppose we could debate the ethics of, except that I didn’t eat any of it. I DID cadge a beer before they closed the open bar. Wes Wolfe, sitting next to me, had the foresight to get three beers at once before it closed.

But the main thing was, it was a TABLE at which we could work comfortably. It was a bit awkward for photography being at the back of the room (we bloggers tend to use cameras that fit in our pockets rather than the cannon-like lenses that the MSM use), but mostly it was fine. And did I mention that Earl Capps was seated on the other side of me, the first time I’ve ever met him? (He didn’t look the way I expected. For some reason I thought of him as some middle-aged guy. Instead, he looked kind of like that guy who fronted “The Commitments” in the movie. Although I’m sure he’s nothing like that tosser.)

That’s not what I started this to tell you about. What I wanted to tell you was this: Our table was on a little platform at the back of the banquet hall. On another platform a few yards away sat the stalwarts of the MSM, including Jim Davenport of The Associated Press and Leroy Chapman of The State. They had laptops, too, but theirs were awkwardly balanced on their knees. They had no table, or any other mod cons. It was sad. They were sitting over there like poor relations. As an old newspaperman myself, I felt a sense of injustice. Not enough of one to offer them my seat, of course, but then I thought they might be too proud to take it. They might not want to rub shoulders with the kinds of sleazebags who swill free beer and openly ask political figures for money.

But it strikes me that this may have been an important moment — the moment when a mainstream party, at one of its biggest events, makes greater accommodation for bloggers than for the MSM. Yes, the fact that the blog-mad Wesley Donehue had arranged it probably distorted things, but still. When some future Gibbon writes The History of the Decline and Fall of the MSM, will this incident figure prominently?

Earl Capps, of Blogland fame, at work on Blogger's Row. Past him, beyond the video camera on the tripod, is the naked platform on which the MSM worked in spartan discomfort.