The Aristocrats

Recently a commenter at Mick LaSalle's blog asked, because of my rather lengthy responses to him, if I was a professional writer. If only. I wish I knew how to make a real buck at this, because I'd be much better at the actual writing part of it. Still, it was very cool to get that kind of question from someone.

Then you see the logical incoherence -- and there must be some sort of play on Richard Cohen's name you can make for that -- that actual professionals traffic in, and you wonder, "What the fuck?".

The rigors of employment in political punditry seem not terribly unlike those of the politicians and policies they supposedly distill. Counterintuitively, it appears that continued employment, tenure, and all the perks that attend those things (teevee shows; reverential treatment as if you actually knew what the fuck you were talking about; trophy wife; vacation house in Nantucket or Hamptons) are inversely proportional to how willing you are to take on the system and its figureheads of the moment.

I'm not completely sure of why Clinton was an exception when he was in office; I assume it has more to do with the monumentally soap-opera minutiae of his particular scandals, but regardless, he has been treated much more sympathetically since then (except, of course, when the kewl kids are sniping at the missus). The right-wing noise machine that keeps ridiculous people employed and cows everyone else is also obviously a huge factor.

Pseudo-contrarian puff pieces such as Cohen's are really the professional pundit's bread and butter. Consider: what better way to distinguish yourself from the all the other scriveners than to posit something completely ridiculous, and then set about bamboozling your audience into your track of thought? As an added advantage, such antics (if successful) serve to bolster your image as an "independent thinker" or an "honest opinionator". Throw in a few shout-outs to the vaunted heartland, as if you vacationed regularly at the World's Largest Ball of Twine, and you are money, baby.

It helps if such attempts are at least somewhat reality-based, and undertaken with some degree of intellectual honesty. But fortunately for the elite dinosaurs who help power-brokers talk to each other, and at us, it's not a job requirement.