Checking In On The Failed Pundits: Inauguration Week Edition
Just after the election, I inaugurated what I cheekily termed a “Pundit Accountability Initiative.” The “initiative” never had a firm definition, scope, or goal. It was based on a simple premise: that so-called pundits, the nebulous group of official opinionators whose job it is to analyze the country’s politics, failed so spectacularly and in such a blatant manner as to necessitate some kind of serious reckoning.
The “culmination” of my efforts was just published in the form of a mini-treatise in the new edition of Current Affairs (which everyone should subscribe to — it’s a great, desperately-needed source of sanity.)
I focus on two particular pundits in the piece: Brian Beutler and Jamelle Bouie. As I noted in one of the earlier drafts of the piece (cut for space) my focus on them is not out of personal animus. If I knew them on a social level, we’d probably get along reasonably well. But that’s the point: if I knew them socially I’d be much more likely to excuse or rationalize their failures. And that’s the big problem with the pundit scene as currently constructed: it has baked into it all kinds of social mores based on nothing more than the primacy of interpersonal relationship networks. The reasons why this is insidious should be obvious. We are far more likely to give our friends a pass. When our friends do something that is “Bad,” we think of it in terms of, “My friend, who I otherwise have a durable affinity for, has done something bad. So rather than assess the badness of the thing they’ve done, I’m going to take a more holistic view, and prioritize my overall affinity for him rather than my on-the-merits assessment of what he’s done.” That’s a reasonable view. It’s good to have friends, and to alter our analytical outlooks in order to accommodate that friendship, in the interest of ensuring that it persists.
But it’s no way to run a Punditocracy. It guarantees that people who are worthy of condemnation will get away with their wrongdoing simply by dint of having amicable social relations with people who would otherwise be in a position to hand down the necessary condemnation.
This is just one factor in why the Punditocracy is so rotted and disgusting. There are many other factors, and it would take a book-length manifesto to discuss them all adequately (stay tuned…). But I focus on that one here because it’s made so abundantly obvious by the way our vaunted pundit class behaves. It’s staring us in the face. And it has real-world consequences: I dwell on this is not because I have kind of petty personal fixation with any of these people. I really do not. It’s because what they do has a tangible, harmful effect on the political system. They are influential elites, and powerful political actors take cues from them. So that demands that their behavior be monitored. It’s not a frivolous exercise.
Please read the Current Affairs piece and let me know where I’ve erred. Also, let me know if you’ve observed any significant change in pundit behavior since the election. I’ve seen a lot of self-exculpatory posturing. Maybe a noble, honest reassessment here or there, but nothing that gives me any confidence that things will markedly change going forward. And seeing as we are mere days away from the Inauguration of a loose cannon authoritarian, we’re desperately going to need a rational, sober pundit class. Otherwise, they will perpetually take Trump’s bait and feed his worst instincts. It could very easily spiral out of control. That’s why I’ve been on this mini-crusade: because there’s a real danger in allowing failure to go unchecked. It will result in more failure. Shocking, I know.
Anyway, I’ll be in Washington, D.C. this week for the goings-on. Get in touch if you’re privy to anything notable.
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