[This rant generated by the pundits who claim that Trump is done, that he won’t run in 2024, that DeSantis is going to be the heir apparent, etc., etc. To which I say, in pundit style: as if. No way. Hasn’t 6+ years of Donald Trump 24/7 made an impression on you?]
According to Wikipedia, “pundit” is derived from the Sanskrit “pandit,” which means learned person, a “knowledge owner.” The contemporary definition of pundit has devolved from the original meaning which suggested that a pundit should possess actual knowledge and be a learned person. According to Wikipedia, a “pundit” now is a “person who offers to mass media opinion or commentary on a particular subject area.” There is nothing in the contemporary definition of the term that suggests the pundit should have knowledge on the particular subject area or that his or her offered opinion should be learned in any way. All one needs to be considered a pundit is to offer an opinion to mass media.
Nothing is mentioned in the definition about getting paid to offer an opinion, but it seems important. I offer my opinion on many subjects, but no one would ever call me a pundit. However, if I were somehow able to get someone to pay me to offer my opinion, wouldn’t that make me a pundit? My opinions need not be based on knowledge or be learned in any way, but if I were getting paid to offer them, I believe I would be considered a pundit.
Punditry! What a great gig! No wonder there are so many pundits offering their opinions when they are getting paid to do so! And it doesn’t matter if the opinions offered prove to be nonsense because they’re just opinions, and everyone knows opinions come and go, and things are always changing, and how can you account for all of the variables in any phenomenon in politics or anything else anyway? So forgive and forget. Move on.
Contemporary pundits can always mea culpa their way onto their next offered opinion. No harm, no foul. It’s just an opinion; it’s your fault if you take it as fact, if you jump to the conclusion that it’s the truth. Yet, pundits present their opinions with such conviction and such self-satisfied assurance that it’s easy to believe they really do think their opinions are the truth. And whenever their opinions do turn out to be true, they waste no time taking credit for their amazing prescience.
My question is why are contemporary pundits getting paid at all? Why are their opinions worth anything on the market? Why is there even a market for punditry? The best paid pundits’ opinions are worth no more than my opinions or the opinions of anyone else on this site or any other site. They’re just opinions and often fantasies woven from whole cloth at best.
As I’m thinking about this, I realize the sorry state of punditry reflects the sorry state of so many of our social institutions. Why are politicians who are supposed to be public servants but who are actually just serving themselves getting paid? Why are CEOs who make millions of dollars a year only to lead their company into bankruptcy getting golden parachutes and getting hired again to demonstrate their incompetence? Why do attorneys make $500 an hour for a letter their secretary writes when teachers don’t even make half that for a full day’s work in the classroom? Why do hedge fund managers make thousands of times more money than working people who fix our roads or repair our fallen power lines?
It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that so many have come to: it’s all bullshit. Bullshit walks. Bullshit sells. Bullshit is what gets you over. Bullshit is what has value. Honesty, integrity, hard work, not so much. That is an opinion, of course, but one substantiated by a lot of evidence.
The good news is that this last election seems to be a step in the direction of calling bullshit on the bullshitters (looking at you, Kari Lake, supreme bullshitter). Let’s keep going in that direction. Maybe a next step could be to stop paying the pundits. At the very least, to be paid, pundits should offer opinions that demonstrate knowledge and some degree of learning. Any pundit who thinks Donald Trump is riding off into the sunset should definitely not get paid.