Recently a friend of mine said she was not interested in political news because when it got right down to it, there was a not a dime's worth of difference between these people...they all had more in common with each other than with us.
It is hard to argue with that these days.
In the midst of the Miers cat fight I have to wonder who these "critics" are.
George Will was the man who called Bush 1 a lap dog and through sheer disdain helped make Bill Clinton president.
Krauthammer and Kristol were [not so long ago] McCain supporters. That would be the McCain of the McCain Feingold Act and the infamous Gang of 14.
Bob Novak helped create the whole Plame/Flame/Wilson debacle.
I am old enough to remember when the pundits loved Souter and had "grave doubts" about Thomas. So much for consistency.
Has the internet with its political blogs made the pundits more important and how many people really care what they say?
In other words when we hear the words "fury and tempest" from pundits..who are these people and who elected them to anything? Where exactly does their influence come from?
I know right now I think that maybe my friend was a lot more right than I gave her credit for at the time.
I think George Will and Maureen Dowd...Charles Krauthammer and Paul Krugman have a lot more in common with each other than they do the rest of us. In fact I would say their most enduring quality is ego.
And I think the internet, this medium right here has a lot to do with giving them an authority and a power they really do not deserve.
15 comments:
I was right with you until the last sentence:
"I think the internet, this medium right here has a lot to with giving them an authority and a power they really do not deserve."
I would argue the opposite - that blogs have diminished the influence of columnists greatly. I would offer Keller's decision to draw a veil over the NYT's leading Democratic propagandist's work as evidence. Every column written by his editorial page luminaries is subjected to dissection and ridicule as soon as it is published. There is an internet cottage industry devoted to describing the flabbiness of the emperor's butt and the NYT can't take it. It was an entirely different matter when the only rebuttal to the idiocies printed in the Times were selected by the same people responsible for hiring the clowns in the first place. Columnists had a much higher positional authority and ability to influence then than they have now. Now they are widely seen as caricatures of propagandists - flogging a dying cause with dead ideas.
Rick:
I would absolutely agree with you if all the people on the internet were there to just show up the big boys.
But in truth many of them have an agenda just the same as the big guys. They are not above destroying people they do not approve of.
The internet is just their medium.
And it can be abused just the same.
I would also add cable news to the list. On one hand Fox offers an alternative to CNN...but the kind of people who do that work are not all that different in temperment.
In other words, you agree with these "pundits" as long as they say things you agree with, and you think its great that they have so much influence, as long as they use it as you think they should.
When they use it in ways you think they should not, you are outraged.
Incidentally, just a few months ago bloggers were considered to be the true voice of the people, the brave scrappy rebels taking on the establishment. When did they suddenly morph into "the establishment" themselves? It seems to have been about the same time that they took positions contrary to the 9/11 Republicans.
Bloggers like Ed Morrisey, M Simon, AllahPundit, or Ace of Spades are not the "elite" or the "establishment". The White House is.
flenser:
No that is not what I mean.
I don't like it when certain bloggers say that the media is running ahead of the facts and then they pile on something or someone and do the same thing when it suits them.
It is called hubris.
I don't like it when they get all sanctimonious over some nominee like Bolton and get all self righteous about the constitutional process and then try to put the breaks on said process or even subvert it when it suits them.
My point is that there is an establishment in Washington and that the longer people cover it and the more a part of it they become the more they over value themselves.
And you know what the White House is less of the establishment than a lot of pundits are.
When Bush's term, or the term of any president, is over...he leaves.
The same can not be said for the chattering classes. They just go right on chattering.
jb:
From what I understand he does not hang around it now.
Everybody is wondering why Bush is off his game.
I don't know if Bush is off his game or if a lot of people have just forgot whatever they knew about public decorum.
As if he [or any president] should make his decisions based on whether the talking heads on cable news or some bloggers will show their butts.
I do resent it. I would rather see a nomination die in a vote than be sabotaged by people no one ever voted for.
A great post, Terrye.
If I find pleasure in anything written about Harriet Miers, it's in counting the huge number of right-wing bloggers claiming to speak in the the name of all 'conservatives'. Squeak squeak squeak.
I strongly support the Miers nomination. After Rod Dreher's amazing hype as he announced the forthcoming George Wills column [wherein he predicted that (in my words) the Miers supporters would be struck dead - deader'n a Belgian Smurf - on Sunday), I eagerly awaited George's big opus.
It was funny.
It was rude.
It was crude.
If that's the best George Will can do, Terrye, you have nothing to worry about.
david:
To a certain extent that is true.
But I think the pundits have gotten out of hand.
The National Enquirer makes money, that does not make them reliable.
I am not saying people have no right to qustion or wonder about a nominee, nothing like that.
But I am saying that there are people who seem to think they can destroy a nominee before the process even takes place.
I think this is a bad precedent, not only for Miers but for every nominee that comes after. And not just nominees, but anyone in public life.
People have forgotten how to be polite and respectful in public.
The tendency to make outlandish claims about the president and to show a complete disrepect for the office has become normal.
100,000 dead in Iraq. Bush lied, people died. smirking chimp. 10,000 dead in Louisiana and it is all Bush's fault.
How does anyone respond to that?
And now we hear that Miers is a moron, a crony, a hypocrite, dishonest, her family is dishonest, she is ugly, she is old, she believes in all kinds of weird things.
If the woman were going on trial she would need a change of venue.
Where does this end?
When is character assasination acceptable? And when do we owe the president some loyalty?
With the Plame business and the hurricanes and the war...is this really the time to be jumping on the bandwagon in some kind of national temer tantrum?
Even if what Will and Kristol believe is true, that they do speak for the "conservatives," they overlook one minor fact. Their conservatives have never won an election. Bush is in office, like Reagan, because Lapsed Democrats and moderates came over to him, not because millions of Americans suddenly decided Charles Keating was right about porn prosecutions or George Will's ability to link partial-birth abortion to the Yankees' blowing the playoffs was the foundation of their personal politics.
So until the pundits can deliver a candidate, they're still a sideshow, galling as that may be to them.
People have forgotten how to be polite and respectful in public.
Maybe we should bring back dueling? It might reduce the number frivolous insults. Especially when the confrontation takes place at twenty paces with automatic weapons. Umm... I suppose at least *one* of the parties needs to survive. Maybe we should revive it with the understanding that only antique weopons may be used.
richard mcenroe,
That's an excellent point you make. He who brings in the voters calls the tune I suppose.
chuck:
I wouldn't trust some of these guys to wait until the count of 10 to turn and shoot.
Grass before breakfast.
In the US, duels were fought with various weapons, including rifled muskets and Arkansas toothpicks.
When James J. Shields challenged Abraham Lincoln to a duel in 1842, the weapons of choice were cavalry broadswords.
Peter:
humph.
What a think to say.
I am offended.
I demand satisfaction for my entire gender.
Peter:
You are not only a cad, you are a coward as well.
a sad day for England.
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