Gizmodo's CES Prank Rocks the Boat, Threatens Blogger Perks

Gizmodo's editorial team pulled a stunt at CES. They took a TV-Be-Gone remote clicker and ran wild in the exhibition hall, extinguishing arrays of flat-screen displays as they went. Watch the video on the Gizmodo page. It's pretty funny, if you're the sort of person who likes calling up the local butcher shop and asking if they have pig's feet. ("You better wear shoes!") Shutting down Panasonic's Wall O' HDTV is a hoot. Shutting down the Motorola press demo repeatedly would be funny if the frontman were Judge Smails, but it's a bit much for some unfortunate PR flack just trying to do his job.

John Biggs at CrunchGear responds. Tech blogging, it seems, has finally found its place at the table, and the Gizmodo stunt might get everyone cut off from the free booze and schwag. Bloggers should grow up, Biggs tells us, because, well, it's grown-up. (Yeah, right, knock off these juvenile stunts and be like real journalists, like Chris Matthews or Maureen Dowd.)

The bitch-slapping between bloggers who get more traffic in a minute than I get in a week might be motivated in part by the fact that Gizmodo is part of Nick Denton's Gawker Media, while CrunchGear is owned by Michael Arrington. Are the rival Blog Empires getting snippy with each other?