The framing context promises to be insightful about how blog wars reveal the raw emotion where ideology meets ideology. But McElroy spends most of the column reporting many details about the altercation between Frish and Goldstein. The reporting seems good, but the history of exchange between these two seems not very important to me. Then even the framing context doesn't deliver a big payoff.
<< a glimpse at how relations between left and right have deteriorated in some circles>>
I believe this was the point in documenting what happened. This case was probably not the best example to use, because it wasn't a situation that started off with L and R being cordial and devolving, but rather yet another instance of Frisch acting like a foul-mouthed bullying lunatic on someone's blog besides her own (where plenty of her bizarre rants were archived). She has made a habit of insulting and trolling the right--PW just did a good job of setting her up and busting her chops on it.