[lbo-talk] Fun game on a slow newsday

[123hop at comcast.net]

Maybe it's because of the blogs I've started following, and that they draw 
attention to the bad, but it's struck me recently (go ahead, laugh) just 
how worthless almost all of the op-ed regulars are. I mean not just creepy 
priorities or ugly politics, but genuinely 
everyone-in-this-room-is-now-dumber-for-having-listened-to-it worthless. I 
never paid that much attention to David Brooks until this past year, but my 
sweet God, how is this man employed in something more challenging than 
simple assembly? He is the most vacuous person this side of some 
combination of Victoria Jackson and one of her SNL characters. And what I 
find kind of amazing is that it's not like they seem to have some sort of 
corpus of insightful exposition or technical expertise that they're still 
coasting on decades later. (Except Charles Krauthammer, as a deeply 
unsettling exception.) A common thread seems to be ivy -- must be that 
lifetime concrete floor you get. With that you could serve time for some 
heinous violence and still get a decent job afterward. 

---- 

Well, as Doug put it so memorably, "Meritocracy = Bullshit + Money." 

But maybe there's more to it. There might also be a great fog of willful self-deception. I have a friend, a senior scientist at one of the big labs in the U.S., IQ over 170, who thinks Tom Friedman is interesting and deep. 

Joanna