The unbearable emptiness of the political pundit

Well Russ Feingold is out of the race for 08 and within that frame, Glenn Greenwald continues his relelentess assault on the emotionally barren and ethicly bereft punditry inside the beltway.

Glen takes aim at the big game consultants and hits the problem dead center. These over-inflated experts have no soul and no interest in understanding the political process beyond an almost psychopathic preoccupation with advancing their own social standing on the cocktail party circuit. They're apple polishers looking for access, not critical analysts.

Time was their conventional wisdom was on the money, but we were wearing saddle shoes and poodle skirts back then. Now they're dinosaurs and no longer really deserve the credibility they enjoy. In the instant information age, their premises are debunked before they even utter their usual bromides. As Glenn puts it:

Not only do they believe in nothing, they think that a Belief in Nothing is a mark of sophistication and wisdom. Those who believe in things too much -- who display political passion or who take their convictions and ideals seriously (Feingold, Howard Dean) -- are either naive or, worse, are the crazy, irrational, loudmouth masses and radicals who disrupt the elevated, measured world of the high-level, dispassionate Beltway sophisticates (James Carville, David Broder, Fred Hiatt).

I'm thinking our job for the next two years is to do some major disrupting of the Important Pundit comfort zone. If we can break their monopoly on the public dialogue, we'll be getting somewhere.