When the rich blog for themselves, they don't stoop to snark or any of the other tactics that common scum like us employ. Take the angelic Melissa C. Morris, the socialite who runs May December. "Over espresso at a restaurant near her Manhattan apartment, she said that, on the Internet and in life, "I focus on the positive. I like to keep things lighthearted. Using a medium that often portrays women of her milieu as spoiled backstabbers, Mrs. Morris offers a rare perspective of New York society on her blog [...] The defunct Socialite Rank once passed harsh judgment over the social ambitions of young Manhattan swells like Mrs. Morris, but it and other socialite observer blogs are generally written by outsiders (in the case of Park Avenue Peerage, a college student in Illinois). But Mrs. Morris, 28, not only lives the life of galas, country houses and world travel, but reports on it in posts utterly free of snark."

"Nowhere on May December (melissacmorris.com) will a reader find salacious gossip or compromising party photos. Instead, in posts written with all the propriety of a thank-you note on Mrs. John L. Strong stationery, she shares a recipe for beef stroganoff and snapshots from a family wedding in Nashville, and seeks help in settling a friendly dispute with her husband.

"In a post titled, 'A Tale of Two Dishwashers,' she wrote, 'When we renovated part of our kitchen we added a butler's pantry (don't get too excited, there's just me and no butler in sight, so technically this room should be renamed Mel's pantry).'

"She compared the merits of a new appliance in the pantry with the older model still in the kitchen, and said she and her husband disagreed about which one was better. 'So, blog readers, what say you,' she wrote, 'dishwasher with the silverware rack up top or dishwasher with the silverware basket?' (In a follow-up post, she said she preferred the basket.)

She could be any housewife - her preferred descriptor - except her homes are on the Upper East Side and in New Canaan, Conn. (where the Mieles in question are). Her husband is Alfred Hennen Morris, 58, known as Chappy, whose ancestors settled New York and helped draft the United States Constitution. And included among friends in those wedding candids is 'Senator Bill,' as in Bill Frist, the former Senate majority leader.

"The juxtaposition of the mundane and the glamorous, provided by a woman who wears her glasses to charity galas and prefers preppy togs to high fashion, nets May December 40,000 hits a month. 'There's nothing too deep about her life, but it's kind of neat to keep up with her,' said Nina Theiss, a Minneapolis stock trader and reader. [NYT]