The pundit is the single most important cog in the political machine. Usually, an ex-politco who was retired by the public and told to go back to his or her law practice or consulting firm and to keep their grubby mitts off of public policy, given a new lease on public life by a 24-hour news network. Unable to leave behind the glitz and glamour of angering half of any given constituency, they leap at the chance to pop in some ear buds and turn on the built-in webcam on their laptop, looking like a confused, low-res, overdressed sex-worker on their first day live streaming their feet to the world. However, instead of bringing joy to some fetishists on the internet, they instead give their opinion on the political hot potato of the day. Truly, they are heroes.
Before the 24-hour news channel, there was no time for the pundit. People would have to turn on the television at six o’clock and watch a half hour of news. Given the short time that had been allocated for news, the anchors only have time to read a news story, and then move onto the next one. They couldn’t even fit all of the day’s news in the broadcast because they needed time for the story about the local tap-dancing cat that performs at retirement homes. That cat probably really undercut some human performers that could have used the money from that gig, but the implications of entertainers cannibalizing their own industry is a topic for a different essay.
After the news, viewers would be left to consider what they’d heard that evening, reflect on their life experiences, maybe have a chat about it at work the next day, and then form an opinion of their very own. Just writing it out makes it sound exhausting. Having to consider the facts that you have and the implications of them in the context of your life is a lot of work. You may form an opinion, and then at a later date wind up re-assessing it and changing your mind. This is the risk you run when you have to think about things. Clearly, there was a gap in the market, and when the world finally had a 24-hour news channel, producers stepped up and solved the problem of people having to think too hard after a long day of figuring out how to out market tap-dancing cats.
And lo, the pundit came to be.
A boon for those whose time is too valuable to spend thinking about things like their impression of harm reduction policies, or how to convert a Word document into a PDF. Men and women who spend their time reading executive summaries or listening to their assistant summarize the summary for them. Wearers of suits, and makers of decisions, they cannot be tasked with forming opinions, they just don’t have the cycles. They need a stance, and they need it now. When indecisiveness is seen as a weakness, you can’t be forming opinions that might change later, that would just show poor judgment on your part. It’s this decisiveness that could lead to a future of being a disgraced politician-cum-pundit.
Sex work is real work, unlike punditry.
David J. Hughes (only like Talking Heads if they’re fronted by David Byrne)
As useful as the pundit is for the chronically driven, it is equally useful for the member of society who has checked out of politics altogether but still wants to have conversations at adult parties without sounding completely uneducated. It’s not entirely their fault that they find themselves in this situation. They just didn’t notice that parties changed from binge-drinking to discussing how to get the best mortgage rate. It never mattered to them since they couldn’t get a job that would afford them the luxury of living without a roommate in a small apartment, so when exactly were they going to buy a house? Hell, they can’t even get enough hours to qualify for benefits.
Worn out from travelling between their part-time jobs and trying to spend their limited leisure time by doing something, like training their pet hamster to pop and lock for the Sunny Horizons Semi-Annual Talent Show (first prize is a bag of Werther’s), to take their mind off of how miserable their life actually is and counting down the days until they’re both too old to work and too poor to avoid homelessness, they just don’t have the energy to stay as informed as they’d like. Still, some of their friends get jobs that pay well, and fall in love, and get married, and buy houses. So it is that the person working 3 part time jobs to make ends meet winds up desperate for an informed sounding idea about how to solve the culture of violence that permeates the police force, the whole while wishing they were crushing cans of Lucky instead of sipping on a vodka tonic. Thankfully, their Twitter feed is littered with sound bites from a variety of pundits telling them what to say at parties, and by extension, what to think.
This is the true value of the pundit. Nothing is better for the status quo than for people to think that they have fully formed ideas when, in fact, they have no idea how they drew the conclusions they did. Ex-politicians have an ability to say anything and make it sound reasonable to a wide swath of people, though not too wide else they’d still be a politician. It’s this communication ability that makes the people parroting their ideas convinced that they got there through careful deliberation of anything more than how much a given pundit’s stance matches their own world view. A world view that has been curated by the preceding pundits in the listener’s life, in the same way that their love of internet feet has been cultivated by their previous sexual encounters.
Not having actually drawn a conclusion, you cannot adequately defend your position, and it becomes difficult to see opposing positions as being held by someone who is as logical and rational as you. Also, you’d probably have an easier time convincing someone that your obsession with the soles of feet is a perfectly natural thing, and that they’re the weird one for not wanting to partake in something so common, than you would convincing someone that their stance on unisex bathrooms is at least a little bit dangerous.
When there is a lack of diversity in opinions, as the ideas that exist in the wild come from fewer and fewer sources, all fifty shades of grey fade away, leaving only black and white. When you can’t understand how someone else formed their thoughts on social safety nets, all you can see is someone who is illogical, irrational, and unable to be reasoned with. Just like your ex who insisted on wearing socks around the house, even in the middle of summer.
Through the pundit, 24-hour news channels have successfully allowed the masses to sound informed without the burden of having to think their way through to a logical conclusion and avoid the potential embarrassment of holding the wrong opinion. From the top of the corporate ladder to the bottom of the rubber feet that stop the corporate ladder from sliding out and causing a lawsuit, pundits are an invaluable source of pre-approved ideas, making conversations between the like-minded less awkward for all.
Where would society be without the noble pundit? I like to think that we’d all be down at the Sunny Horizons Semi-Annual Talent Show watching Robin Hawke the Hamster that can Pop ‘n Lock put on one heck of a show.
David J. Hughes