I Cogitate
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Hits versus errors in the punditocracy
Does anyone remember the last time any member of the well-paid and oh-so-righteous punditocracy appeared either on television or in print and admitted "you know that characterization/prediction I made earlier? Well, I was wrong.'
Do any newspaper editors or televison producers go back and perform a veracity check of these various grandiose predictions, the my-knowledge-is-tremendous-and-insightful utterings of these individuals for, as Stephen Colbert might put it, the sake of truthiness?
Shouldn't there be something in place, a la baseball's Mendoza Line, to rate the credibility of these cognoscenti? (The Mendoza Line being a .200 batting average, something considered truly poor)
The trustworthiness and value of each individual could then be printed, just like batting averages, with each appearance.
Yes, Joe such-and-such has whiffed with his last eight predictions. Or Jane such-and-such has nailed two home runs in a row.
We could employ a rating system and then read or watch for what it's worth.
Then it could easily be determined who is simply an ignorant blowhard versus who actually has the validity to open his or her mouth or tap at the keyboard
There are a number of pundits easily willing to pontificate, as long as the money is right, the host compliant, the editor malleable and the camera flattering.
But too often, this same bunch leads the cheers only if they are safely ensconced in a studio or office somewhere and don't have to face gunfire, pull a trigger, commit torture or end someone else's life.
As long as others do it for them.
Others, who face and deal with the consequences.
Here are some excerpts from Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) that 'indicate' the exactitude of many of the well-known and well-paid savants:
"The Final Word Is Hooray!"
Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits
3/15/06
"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate could ignore it."To read the rest, go here.
(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)
"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)
"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)
"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer, 3/30/03)
"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)
"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)
"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)
"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)
"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)
"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)
"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)
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