That's the question we tried to tackle at the Pajamas Media event last night at the National Press Club. The gist of my remarks was that it is a very difficult, if not impossible question to answer. Indeed, I came to the conclusion that it's probably best to fall back on the answer people most often give when asked to define pornography: "you'll know it when you see it." Here are three observations I tried to make last night about partisanship.

In general, I think partisanship is a good thing. As the editor of a political web site whose mission is to seek out and publish the best political commentary, opinion, and analysis across a broad range of viewpoints, partisanship is often what gives force to an argument and makes it compelling.

That said, there is a difference between "smart partisanship" and a much less attractive alternative that relies on invective rather than argument and employs the widespread use of insults and obscenities. This is a problem the left continues to struggle with given that the new media revolution (to use a pretentious phrase) has taken place almost entirely in the last five years under the tenure of George W. Bush and given voice to a core of the most active liberal partisans who A) believe he wasn't legitimately elected in the first place - or legitimately reelected in 2004 - and who B) believe the President and his administration deliberately misled the country into the current war in Iraq.

One reason the question of "how partisan is too partisan" is almost impossible to answer is because the concept of partisanship is itself too subjective. The example I cited last night was the Swift Boat Veterans from the 2004 campaign. Basically half the country - meaning the 48% who voted for John Kerry - viewed the Swift Boat Veterans as an egregiously partisan attack. The other half of the country - or at least a good portion of the 51% who ended up voting for George W. Bush - thought it was perfectly legitimate, indeed newsworthy, that more than 100 of John Kerry's fellow Vietnam vets, including nearly all of his commanders, came forward and went on record to say that he was unfit to serve as Commander in Chief for a variety of reasons.

I think most would agree that if 100-plus members of the Texas Air National Guard had come forward in the same manner to denounce George W. Bush in either 2000 or 2004, liberals would have had a much different opinion on the matter - and the media would have covered it extensively.

Another example is to look at what's currently happening in the Virginia Senate race. Many of the same folks who moaned and screeched about the Swift Boat Vets attack on John Kerry two years ago as too partisan see nothing untoward about the attack being leveled against George Allen - which essentially boils down to a "he said-she said" affair between Allen and one person who went on the record (supported by anonymous sources) alleging he used the n-word thirty-five years ago.

The final point I tried to make last night is that naked partisanship, even of the most extreme kind, is preferable to partisanship masquerading as objectivity. I was thinking specifically about Dan Rather's Memogate episode and also the recent "fauxtography" incidents during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. The idea that evidence can be manufactured, images enhanced, and that "fake but accurate" is a new standard for professional journalists are all deeply disturbing and corrosive results of partisanship and bias in the media.

In a broader sense, the whole notion of objectivity in the media has fallen away on partisan lines. Conservatives look at FOX News and find the coverage exactly as advertised ("fair and balanced") while liberals see FOX as a shameless propaganda machine and mouthpiece of the Bush administration. Liberals read the New York Times and believe they're getting an objective take on the news, conservatives see a paper thoroughly riddled by liberal partisanship engaged in an agenda-journalism crusade against the Bush administration.

There aren't any profound conclusions to draw - not by me anyway - except that when it comes to discussing "how partisan is too partisan," the left and the right will have to agree to disagree. It was a great event last night and I was honored to be included among such a distinguished panel of guests.