A plea to the punditry

By Libby

Is it too much to ask that our "serious pundits" discuss something remotely resembling serious issues? I mean I took a tremendous amount of flack for suggesting Thompson's young wife might be a factor in the race, but when our poli-pundits constantly obsess about gender and hair, I don't see how that wasn't a legitimate question. Take these choice cuts from recent Chris Matthews roundtables gossipy giggle fests .

MATTHEWS: OK, let's put the gender thing in here. I love gender politics, guys.

MATTHEWS: OK, well let's talk about that. I am stunned at these last supper scenes, where the Last Supper in history was all men, every scene you see with Hillary is a lunch, and it's all women. She is advertising her sisterhood. Is that something she can use to help sell herself as a future strong person defending this country, or does it get in the way?

PARKER: It makes a case with a certain demographic, and I noticed the picture on the front of The Washington Post the other day showed her with all these women and her crew, and did you notice, there was only one blonde out of about 15 women, so it sort of -- I thought that was very telling.

Of course Kathleen is not telling what that tells and Matthews slides over it without remark and by the way, what does the Last Supper have to do with politics? But they make the big bucks for this sorry excuse for political analysis? Would it kill them to discuss policy instead of peroxide or is that just too much like real work?

Little wonder our campaigns are decided on trivial issues when our paid punditry refuses to focus on anything else.