The Nature of Things

There's another rant that I need to get off my chest before I leave the subject of pundits. All year long we've been hearing from these looney tunes, tone-deaf guys and gals about how this election year will be come-uppance for incumbents. You see, according to them, Americans are mad as hell at incumbents and they are not going to take it any more. This will be the year when they throw the bums out and bring in new blood, according to the narrative of the punditocracy. Especially new tea party blood. The pundits really, really love the tea party, because it says and does outrageous things and gives them fluff with which to fill up their 24-hour news cycle. So what has been the record so far of incumbents in this year of "throwing the bums out"? Well, roughly 99% of them have won their races. Only about four have gone down to defeat and two of those were turncoats who had switched party in mid-stream - one from Republican to Democratic and one from Democratic t...

I am sick of pundits. I am especially sick of the ones who have been blathering on almost since the awful oil spill began about how the president isn't showing enough emotion about it. He needs to get angry, shake his fist, spit fire, punch somebody. This is what the pundits live for - something that makes good theater. Something that helps them fill their three minutes on live television. If I were the president, I'd definitely be angry about a lot of things, but perhaps the thing I'd be angriest about is the damned pundits who don't seem to have a clue about the real world. Theirs is the virtual world of the 24-hour news cycle and the "conventional wisdom" of the "inside the beltway" clan. The rest of us, including the president, live in quite another world. I'm not interested in a president getting angry and putting on a show for the 24-hour news guys. I'm interested in a president who is competent, intelligent, and thoughtful about...

It was primary day in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and Oregon, and an interesting one it was, too. At this hour, it has been determined that the tea party candidate, Rand Paul, has won the Republican primary for senator of Kentucky. The Democratic race for that office has been much closer with two strong candidates, the current Attorney General and Lt. Governor of the state. At present the Attorney General has a slim lead. Interestingly, both the Attorney General and the Lt. Governor have received more votes than Rand Paul did! I wonder if the mainstream media will mention that. I would guess not. In Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter found that switching parties was not the golden ticket to continued incumbency that he had thought. Rep. Joe Sestak beat him rather decisively. It will be a tough battle for Sestak in the general election, but he might just pull it off. He's a pretty tough campaigner. The really interesting race in Pennsylvania was the special election for the...

The Washington Post asked twelve people what in the world they would like to get rid of . Surprisingly, perhaps, one of the people that they asked, Donna Brazile who is herself a TV pundit, said that we should get rid of pundits. I agree. As far as I can tell, the only function of the TV pundit is to scream at his/her opposite number. The modus operandi of cable television is to bring on two pundits from opposite ends of the political spectrum and let them yell back and forth at each other, adding heat but no light to the subject. They get extra points if they constantly interrupt the other person and never let him/her finish a thought. In fact, the whole purpose of the pundit is to keep the other person from coherently stating his case. It doesn't matter if the professional pundit doesn't really have a cogent case himself/herself, he/she wins by simply not letting the other person talk. This, then, is what passes for "fair and balanced" journalism in the worl...