Primary Thoughts
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008Pundits are idiots. I’ve spent a lot of time on blogs, opining, then vigorously defending said opine, and never have I assumed that just because I said something, it must be so. I take my readers seriously. They are investing time in our argument, and even if they piss me off to the point I have to step away for a moment and regroup, the real reason we’re here, the exchange of ideas and information, is being served. Some bloggers aspire to be pundits. They aren’t there to argue, they are there to inform that their weighty opinion matters, and that of their reader does not. Really? Honey, it y’all were all that, you’d have jobs as analysts.
These days, our news media loves pundits. In the fast slide from fact based journalism to political columnist, we suffer through media dictatorship. Our information is filtered through somebody else’s parameters, blared like so much propaganda, and leaves the average intelligent adult nonplussed.
Take Iowa and New Hampshire, for example. At the conclusion of the Iowa caucus, Obama sported a 10 point lead. He’s off to a good start. His campaign strategy on the ground worked in Iowa. Clinton’s did not. Edwards did well, considering he is less well funded. These are the facts.
Instead we hear Clinton is one step from out. Obama is the new inevitable winner. The race is now between Edwards and Obama. Obama can’t lose in NH. Blah, blah, blah, BS-cakes.
Yesterday in NH, Clinton won by 3 points. People in that state responded better to Clinton’s campaign. They also responded well to Obama’s, but in slightly smaller numbers. Edwards came off with a third place, and needs to do well in Nevada and South Carolina to keep his campaign on track. Somebody in NH had heard of Kucinich. These are also the facts.
Instead we get that Clinton’s victory is a stunner. That her campaign is no longer dead. That Obama is on the hot seat and Edwards is dead. That, well, we don’t know a damn thing, but when has that stopped us from telling you what we think you should think?
The heart of the matter is drive and money. Facts are stubborn little buggers, they take time and patience to procure. They require ability; you have to want to dig them out. Espousing an educated guess, or worse, just what you think will sell a paper, requires little ability and even less character. Yet, are the papers selling? Uh, no. What they offer is readily available on blogs, with the added bonus of human interaction and argument, something Americans love.
This country was founded on an argument, and we’ve argued ever since. We believe that it’s the only way to rip off the fluff and find the prize: truth. We like truth. From childhood we’ve believed it should be self-evident. This is so ingrained in our national ideal of what it is to be American, that we are having a hard time collectively, watching our national psyche tarnish on the international stage. In our gut, we crave shining beacon status.
This is one reason why newspapers are failing. The time for filling space with speculation and expecting people to believe it is over. Thanks to blogs, we all have our places where we can go and read the ridiculous, the inspiring, and the original thoughts of our peers. We know this medium well; we tap it daily. We don’t need punditocracy disguised as journalism.
We need facts. More importantly, we need a media infrastructure that supports, protects and holds high expectation for factual journalistic endeavor. We need tough questions and good editing. They need to stop sucking the profit pipe to the point that the whole reason for the industry is bastardized.
There are 48 states to go; you’d never know it, based on what you read today. That, my friends, is a very sad fact.