Sunday, June 30, 2024

What Fools These Pundits Be

"It wouldn’t work legally, it wouldn’t work politically…” When you set aside the handful of actual lawyers covering Trump’s criminal and civil trials, you realize at a moment like this the majority of the punditry doesn’t know shit from Shinola.

They’ve supposedly been at this long enough to know how things are done, and why they are done that way. They’ve practiced the solemn tones that make them sound wise, and rely on their experience to provide the veneer of expertise, but in truth they are ignorant as babes, as clueless as teenagers anxious to do whatever it takes to sit at the kewl table at lunchtime.

The August NYT editorial board pronounces that it must be so, and they all fall into line. Can it be so? Can the ballots be changed in all 50 at this late date? Would the Democratic voters stand for the replacement of their elected candidate because the NYT harrumphed? Is this how the real world works? 

Doesn’t matter. The pundits are in agreement. Ignore them at your peril. Or, rather, attend them at your peril because they don’t have a fucking clue, and they must opine, but they must not oppose the newly announced Received Opinion. To do so would be to appear partisan (the Philadelphia Inquirer is already guilty of this sin*); it would certainly get you barred from the kewl table.

The people who make this their career, based on their experience and acquired knowledge and their claims of expertise, cast all that aside the moment they opine, the better to follow the pack. But as they cast it off so easily, it’s fair to wonder if they ever had any knowledge at all. The lawyers who become journalists have at least some working knowledge of the courtroom. The non-lawyers are as insightful as if they were just dropped in-country and don’t even speak the language. As for political coverage, do they never understand at least the legal process underpinning the electoral one? Much less the political process that leads to a candidate being the party’s nominee?

Signs point to “No.”



*As a public service:
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1 comment:

  1. The Thought Criminal10:00 AM

    I was going to mention the Philadelphia Inquirer being about the only media outlet in the country to make the obvious point, that if anyone should withdraw it's Trump. Something that the NYT, the WaPo and the rest of the Republican-fascist friendly media is too corrupt to say. These days I have more respect for the NY Daily News than I do the NYT.

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