Yourself?

Discuss.

"Anyhow, although I do think the level of debate in the blogosphere can be quite impressive, I think the format will forever be limited by the contraints of punditry (which I'll use synonmously with the perhaps more exalted term "public intellectual").

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who's a grad student in my department who mentioned how increasingly disappointed she's been with journalism in general, and it stimulated some thoughts about the problems of punditry. The problem with pundits, and most bloggers are basically pundits or talking-heads (which now includes me for better or for worse), even if they're sometimes much better pundits than usual, is that they're almost obligated to comment on everything, including things they may have no special knowledge about. There's usually no harm done, assuming the pundits are reasonably intelligent--native wit and common sense can go a long way after all--and our democratic polity is premised in part on the idea that no specialized knowledge is needed for making the most important political decisions, but this sometimes does cause problems."

posted by Downhere. @ 9:54 pm