(Source: vanityfair.com)
… The commentariat is so snugly, smugly entrenched that it doesn’t need higher-ups to act as enforcers; editors come and go, but the pundits remain in continuous orbit, decoupled from Newsweek to join Huffington Post or Politico or the Atlantic online or Bloomberg, it doesn’t matter, they always end up in the same Green Room where David Gergen is gargling furniture polish to give his opinions a mahogany veneer and Peggy Noonan forever is holding a novena.
Just last week I was in NY for a couple of days for a meeting with the supreme allied command at Vanity Fair and spotted David Brooks on the sidewalk looking ever so punditorial. I thought about heckling him as he went by, you know, just to stay limber, but then I thought, He’s probably just churning some smooth creamy bullshit for his next column or his next PBS appearance and nothing I say is going to interrupt its flow and bogus consistency now or ever, so what’s the point, he’s inside the bubble and the only opinions he cares about are from his fellow bubbleonians.
And of course tonight’s a big night for the bubbleonians, one of the biggest: the second Obama-Romney debate, immediately after which ‘seasoned political observers’ are released like ferrets and undecided voters are coaxed for their reactions before being given a cookie and led back to Nurse Ratched’s ward.
— James Wolcott
