Here's another column from Hustler by Alex Bennett and edited by the esteemed Bruce David
To believe that people on the left tell the truth all the time and the right is lying is a liberal conceit. To feel the opposite is a conservative one. The truth be said neither left or right has a franchise on the truth and both probably distort as much as the other. Yet both sides believe they are correct and honest in their presentation of what they perceive as fact.
So who do you believe? Truth is subjective and is in the eye of the beholder. I’m a leftist and because of those beliefs George W. Bush was a foul, immoral, international criminal. To a right-winger George was just doing his job of protecting America and fighting for democracy and capitalism in a world beset by terrorist. By the way the reason according to them that the world hates us is because they are jealous. Of just what I haven’t figured out.
The worst example of this can be found on cable TV where we are beset on all sides by pundits. This is an entirely new profession created out of the laziness of the news networks who have to fill their airwaves with a little something called journalism and haven’t quite gotten the hang of it. This in case you didn’t know, in most cases is a paid position. Paul Begala, Bill Bennett, Ed Schultz and Donna Brazile are just some of the mouths for hire. They don’t do this out of a passion for truth, they are grabbed from the pool of radio talk show hosts, journalists and former political advisors all chasing TV Careers.
The pundit is expected to be provocative first and accurate second. You see them all the time in little square boxes surrounding the host, sometimes as many as four at a time, looking like a bizarre version of “The Brady Bunch”. They fight with each other and present their arguments as fact. The host, loving a good fight, just lets it go on without challenging the fucked up conceptions or errors in accuracy of either side.
Then there is what cable feels is diversity. Liberals and Neo-cons in equal numbers. Never a lefty or true conservative, they might say something that in bad taste (read “something you don’t want to hear”), they are much too boring and God help us, they might have some accurate facts to contribute. It really is lazy television. Just start these guys talking and then sit back and watch the minutes fly by.
I admit that I too have on occasion been one of those pundits. For about 10 weeks in a row I pretended to know what I was talking about on “Tucker” over at MSNBC. First let me say that my experience with Carlson was very pleasant and no matter what you say about the guy, he treated me well. I was always paired up with a guy from Florida who had an opinion 180 degrees from mine and about 90 degrees from Tucker’s. It was fun but disconcerting. I was in New York in a bathroom-sized studio with a robot camera and a earpiece so I could hear everybody else. I couldn’t see anything but had to pretend like I did. I was in the “Big Apple”, my opponent was in Florida , Tucker was in Washington and the control room for all of this was in New Jersey. The art was to make it look easy and to look good under such disconnection. I suppose the other downside was that, even though they gave you the topics in advance, you had to have an opinion on everything they threw at you.
Fox News believe it or not has always been civil to me in spite of my “lefty” leanings. Oh sure one time the makeup woman jokingly remarked “Gee a liberal, we don’t see them a lot around here”. I was doing the Neil Cavuto show and the subject was the wearing of Flag pins. Cavuto thought that as a leftie I would be against them. When I told him that I wasn’t, he tried to push me into his preconceived notion that did. He wanted a confrontation and even though I kept telling him that liberals in general don’t look down on people who wore them, he kept trying. In the end he didn’t get his pound of flesh. I don’t know, it just may be paranoia on my part, but I’ve never been asked back by Cavuto again.
Pundits are a dime a dozen, but a few of them make real good money at it. The really smart people rarely make to these forums, either because they aren’t into putting on “The Big Show” or they just don’t want to be seen in the company of fools at any price. Until they do, the circus will continue.
