Good time for a brainy pundit

I feel just awful that David Broder is stumped about economics. Maybe that's why he likes John McCain so much.

Here's the thing: An effective media would feel obligated to come to grips with actual understanding of the issues. A real press corps wouldn't vacillate from ignorant scandal-mongering to ignorant hagiography. No, I don't need someone else to tell me how gosh-darn smart Barack Obama is, gee whillickers.

What I want from the press is what the blogosphere offers if you blow through enough chaff: a conscientious attempt to learn and analyze the issues and the people, to appeal to expertise when needed, but to put everything through a fine-grained bullshit detector.

What I get from the press: the attitude of middle school cheerleaders, who long since learned that smart is unpopular, who acquire dumbness - posed or not - for social purposes, who shrug in geometry class and steer the conversation to that really cute asshole cut-up football player who was really wasted out by the high tension lines after the game on Friday night. Their only expertise is personality, and frankly they get taken in by every insincere bullshit peddler who has a little flash.

So I guess I'm on my own. I do wish Broder would admit to his ignorance more often. Then maybe he'd give up his retirement in place and get off to addling his grandkids or the friends he could then meet up with every day for breakfast and coffee. Enough coasting on work he did fifty years ago.

(h/t Ahab)