Beware of pundits. Especially in the New York Times op-ed pages.

Once upon a time, before the dawn of everything-is-on-the-web era, for a while I was a subscriber to the New York Times.  The Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the local paper--the Bakersfield Californian. Sometimes the Los Angeles Times too!  All at the same time.  It was always quite a haul of paper to the local recycling collection bins.

Then, not only did the web happen, everything was for free too.  It was down to the local paper alone.  

Given the three hour time zone difference, it was also fun to read the following day's east coast papers as pre-bedtime reading, and blog about them.  I was, of course, keen on the op-eds and columns there, with the exception of the crazy William Kristol experiment that the Times did.  Come to think of it, those Kristol months was also perhaps the beginning of the end of my daily habit of reading the Times.

The Times erecting a paywall, therefore, didn't bother me one bit.  By then I had pretty much stopped reading that paper, and there was nothing I was missing anyway.  Every once in a while, our local paper reprints a Times column by Thomas Friedman or Nicholas Kristof or Paul Krugman and I am all the more relieved that I am staying away from the paper.

The rare occasion that I read a Friedman piece, I am amazed that he gets to say such remarkably stupid things on an international stage and get paid gazillions for it.  I suppose there is a sucker born every minute.  Over the years, the guy has become nothing but a master manipulator of metaphors and cliches.  I guess punditry means that the more one is incorrect and inane, the more airtime and money they get!

A couple of days ago, I came across a Kristof column urging the US to actively intervene in Syria, with our military might.  It didn't surprise me that he too has gone off the deep end of punditry!

The Onion, which is in many ways America's Finest News Source, described the New York Times quite well:

New York Times, daily newsletter of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). Founded in 1851, the New York Times newsletter is an indispensable source of information for AARP members, with articles tailored specifically for persons 55 and older, as well as news and views from columnists such as Frank Rich, Thomas Friedman, and Maureen Dowd, who provide an elder perspective on issues of the day. 

Of course, it is not merely the political pundits whose celebrity status increases with yet another incorrect pronouncement.  Ronald Bailey quotes the late Julian Simon:

“How often does a prophet have to be wrong before we no longer believe that he or she is a true prophet?”

That was in the context of the famous debate between Simon, the optimist, and Paul Ehrlich, the doomsday prophet whose predictions about famines, deaths, shortages, and price hikes never came to pass. Not only did all those predicted horrors fail to happen, our collective prosperity continues to increase, with more food than ever and all kinds of fancy goods being manufactured with resources that never seem to be in shortage at all.

Yet, society seems to favor the wrong pundits, more often than not.  Even when time and again the huge errors of the pundits are difficult to ignore.  My guess is that it is all ideological and preferential.  The liberal left, for instance, continue to echo the views of a Ehrlich or a Kristof because these pundits are theirs, while the conservative right celebrates the punditry of a Kristol because he is theirs.  All are nothing but the variations of the old political bottom-line of "he may be a sonofabitch, but he is our sonofabitch."

Oh well.

I know, I know--I am preaching to the choir.  You, the reader, know better.  Which is why you read this pundit's daily rants--after all, he comes from the land that gave the English language the word "pundit" ;)