In case semi-regular readers have noticed, I haven't been posting over the past week or so. In fact, I've been struggling with a serious decision. Last Monday, I learned of the Washington Post's "Next American Pundit" contest. I initially tossed my scruples aside, wrote a not-quite-400 word piece, and have been sitting on it ever since, allowing my conscience to eat away at me.
I consulted a couple people, both of whom encouraged me. Yet, I knew I was being a big fat hypocrite by doing so. Worse, as the week went on, instance after instance of truly bad writing and analysis was offered up by this same newspaper. I realized I was deliberately holding back writing what I wanted to write because I might be courting this newspaper. Worse, in the off-chance that I actually won, there were even more things to consider beyond censoring myself out of company loyalty. I would be surrendering my freedom to write what I wanted in the way I wanted.
The fact is, pundits are whores. They do not serve the people, but fellate office holders and their staffs, administration officials and various power-brokers, currying favor and ensuring that even obscure officers now and then. I have no desire to sell my services, as meager as they may be, to any one. I refuse to keep silent on the degradation of our public discourse because those degrading it happen to work at the same place I do. If Charles Krauthammer writes something both abysmally stupid and dangerous, I would rather be free to have four people read it here, than thousands read it as my last column in a major newspaper.
Print punditry, television punditry does not serve the interests of democracy. Blogs do. I recently heard of a political science study on blogs; the author said that most bloggers type away in obscurity, with only a few of the big ones getting links and hits. I guess the conclusion was that blogging is relatively unimportant to our national life.
Which begs the question, of course, of how one defines "important". Especially liberal bloggers tend to be scrupulously addicted to factual accuracy, to a certain set of moral principles, and to empowering more and more people to get involved in our public life in part by becoming more and better informed. Even if this blog only has a handful of readers, that's OK, because with obscurity comes the freedom to say what I want to say in my own way, without fear. If I feel like saying David Broder is a senile old fart who passed his prime before Lyndon Johnson left office, I at least can do so without having David Broder threatening my job.
So, I am not entering. I am not going to compromise my freedom, or my understanding that the paper in question is becoming a sad parody of a serious newspaper, publishing junk and nonsense written by people who continue to believe that nothing fundamental has changed in the country; people who believe that John McCain and Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe and Charles Krauthammer and Richard Cohen and David Broder and George Will present views in tune with the American people.
To the editors at the WaPo, may I quote a scribe from the New York Times": Suck. On. This.
And the next post is the piece I was going to enter. I'd like your opinion on it, if you don't mind.
