Pundit Fatigue

I spend a lot of time reading opinion articles ranging from editorials, journal pieces, symposiums, and blog posts. I fully admit to being an information junkie, and my tastes aren't necessarily quarantined to geopolitics, but if you judged by the content on this site, it is clearly my predominant inspiration.

I've steered away from posting a lot about geopolitics lately, because frankly, what is being written has been, for the most part, breaking down and coagulating into a single, gooey substance that has no value other than to consume, devour and transform those who step in it. I used to be able to pick up publications like the Economist, the New Republic, the NRO, and the Washington Post to find some well written pieces that really helped me to think through various issues of the day. Regardless of whether I agreed with their conclusions or not, it was written in a style that helped present facts in order to draw conclusions from them. Of course, it wasn't perfect, but overall it is what differentiated the upper echelon from say, TIME, Newsweek or the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Iraq changed everything. No longer is it deemed appropriate to adhere to traditional journalistic standards of reporting and avoiding fallacious arguments, it was completely acceptable to write the editorialized "news" piece. The opinion pieces became more emotive than substantive and the amount of respect I previously held for these stalwarts evaporated. The NRO for the most part stayed pretty well above the things until the Immigration issue (Jonah Goldberg and Jim Geraghty notwithstanding) sent them into convulsions.

This is nothing new to those who have spent any time reading my stuff. I've been an avid and fortuitous basher of the Mainstream Media for quite sometime. However, I had blogs to read. Initially bloggers were a cold cup of water to the MSM's relentless negativism and dour mood. But there has been a major shift in the last two years. Just as the MSM became unhinged, many high profile bloggers have had complete meltdowns. Everyone of these unhinged bloggers had their issue (Andrew Sullivan had gay marriage, Greg Djerjian had Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Quick had the Iraqi Constitution, Stephen Bainbridge has his LBJ-Bush fetish and now Michele Malkin has Illegal Immigration), but the common denominator is that none of these previously and otherwise rational people have been able to recover from the day they decided to throw themselves down the stairs in the middle of the cocktail party.

Before I go any further, I want to make sure that it is clear that I am not writing this post as a masked apologetic for the Bush Administration. My criticsms of their handling of the war, domestic spending, etc. are well documented and also completely irrelevant to what I am trying to say here. I am qualifying this only as a pre-emptive measure towards the outrage crowd who's only retort is to wax apopletic when you tell them to calm down. I have my criticsms, but I'm not ready to hand my country over to Nancy Pelosi to make a point about some important, but as The Colossus says, secondary issue.

I'm beginning to realize, that the outbreak of this recent viral outrage is less of a function of our President's leadership, than it is a function of Pundititis. Everyday pundits have to produce content to keep inbound traffic and regular readership steady. Outrage brings in links and angry commenters. ConverselyInstapundit is such an anamoly in that he has consistently remained not only one the most popular bloggers, but continually produces the most level-headed and well thought out content in doing so. Fair and balanced doesn't mean not having an opinion, in means putting things in perspective and articulating them through rational arguments. The reason I hit Glenn a few times a day is more a function of his professionalism and quality of thought than of volume of output. Same reason I read Jeff Goldstein, but their approaches and tone are wildly different.

Listen, this site is an ant-hill in the middle of a valley surrounded by looming and brooding mountains. In the year-and-a-half that I've had this site, I've yet to receive one Instalanche, and if all I have to offer are sporadic posts about Death Valley, it'll continue. I think the duration between initial launch and Instanlanche might be an internet record, since Glenn has easily posted 8 million posts since I started this site. Maybe I should get an anti-matter, McDonald's type sign (Instapundit--More Than 8 Million Posts w/o Serving TF6S).

I write on this blog as a way to express my thoughts on whatever I find important to me, and even though I spend a lot of time reading and digesting blogs, my desire to make this anything more than a personal hobby are nil. There are no ads on this site (there never will be) and my traffic is negligable. My ant-hill may be insignificant, but it is the ant-hill I where I live and am pround of. My perspective that comes from living in the real world, shapes opinions that allow for the leeway of inevitable human error.

I have met some great friends through this site who I regularly interact with, and make keeping this thing alive very important to me. You guys know who you are.

Now that I've established that I am waaaaaay better than everyone else, lets see who wants some more. You wanna little? Huuuuhhh?

Normally my advice to the lot of the outraged who are publically embarrassing themselves to their higher cause would be to have a Coke and a smile and shut the eff up chill out for a bit. Walk away from the keyboard.

* I'm afraid the only cure though, is for them to get a real job. One where they are required to work with people, compromise competing interests, make decisions based on inadequate information and to be held accountable for it. I guarantee that the same level of outrage that many of these folks continually put on the shoulders of those who are active decision makers in the real world would not be as willing to apply the same level of scrutiny to themselves.

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*Tongue in cheek warning - I'm not seriously suggesting that these people don't have real jobs. I was being mean because I like poking at people who are perpetually angry (I think it is a trait in my family). It would be nice, though, if some of these otherwise intelligent people were able to display a little more contextual acumen when opining on world/domestic events.

Now if you don't mind, I'm going to ride my high-horse back to work.

UPDATE: The Colossus comments:

And Pundititis? Spot on. I think all of us like to think the subjects that concern us are important. Where we get into trouble is when we develop a blind spot that makes us think that our secondary issues are the most important thing in the world. I think the most powerful bloggers have the ability to create their own "reality-distortion field", to borrow a term from the computer industry, which is really just a polite way of saying that we're beginning to believe our own bullshit, or have begun to drink our own Kool-aid. Is illegal immigration important? Yeah, maybe. Is it as big an issue as the number 2 blogger in the world is making it? Not even close.

Seriously.