Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw lashed out at the rapid expansion of the blogosphere, which he said is now laced with profane, vitriolic and misogynistic language.

Brokaw made his comments on Tuesday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC:

…I think about my grandchildren, just from a domestic point of view. They’ll still have very good lives, they’ll be able to go places. But it will not be as easy for them. People will be looking in on their lives. We talk about any time that they send an email message, it’ll be there forever in some ways. And what troubles me a lot more with every passing day is the expansion of the blogosphere and the outrageous commentary now hidden behind pseudonyms of one kind or another. It’s been bad for some time. But now it’s become so vitriolic and scabrous and profane — and a lot of misogyny directed at women who are in public office. You read the worst kinds of things about them. Look, I’m a public person and so are you and so is Michael [Beschloss] up to a point: We can take the hits, but somebody who just finds themselves coincidentally in the news, then comes under this vicious attack, and we don’t know where the roots of it are, and it’s there forever. It’s the dialogue that we ought to be having in this country about the impact of all of this on, if you will, the commonwealth and civility and what we stand for.

I understand Brokaw’s anger and frustration with the blogosphere, but he is tarring all bloggers with the same brush. A large majority of blogs are operated by reputable and honest individuals, and many are doing the investigative work that the mainstream media no longer do.

But maybe what’s really bothering Brokaw is that the blogosphere is exposing inconvenient truths that he would have preferred to have left untold.