You don't have to imagine. Skip Bayless has enjoyed a rather long career.

Pundits are kind of like Bloggers.

You don't have to be very accurate. You just need to attract readers so that you can collect money from the ads to pay your salary.

Benen's continued adulation of the annoying and snarky Rachel Maddow continues to astound. She's obviously smart and her success is an interesting story, but her demeanor is offputting to say the least.

Recently I unfortunately tuned into a football game before it started and witnessed the experts - all former players and coaches - make their predictions, along with the FrankTV guy who does impersonations. What I found interesting is that the FrankTV guy had as good of a record over the season as Terry Bradshaw who's been doing this for about 15 years. So no accountability for them either.

That said, TV sports commentators are also there for entertainment and not accuracy as well.

Brad, you beat me to this. But how about Jay Mariotti? Or Woody Paige?

Yes, but Bayliss's idiocy has gotten him chased from several markets (DFW, Chicago, San Jose), such that he is now reduced to perfoming-flea status on ESPN's morning programming or some such non-entity. If such market forces were on display in the political punditry world, William Kristol would be posting YouTube videos shot in his dad's basement.

"Using Ezra's analogy, imagine a sports commentator whose predictions are always wrong, whose rumors never pan out, and whose observations aren't based on reality."

You just described Tim McCarer, who has been calling World Series games forever. Please find another, more appropriate analogy.

Re accuracy of sports commentators.

Two words.

Mel Kiper.

He only does one thing, predicts the draft order. And he sucks at it. But he comes around every year.

Political scientists have studied pundit predictions and found them to be, on the overall, inaccurate.

In other news, water wet, fire hot. Stay tuned.

You don't have to be very accurate. You just need to attract readers so that you can collect money from the ads to pay your salary.

For disinfotainers like Limbaugh, Coulter, and others, yes, the priority is profit-by-rube. But for the "political-class" sleazebags like Kristol and Rove, what they say is all about propaganda and the associated political goals.

It's not about ratings. Hasn't been for a long time.
If it were about ratings, Donahue would not have been cancelled in '03, when his show consistently outperformed Matthews' Hardball, and was the highest rated show in MSNBC's lineup. As a leaked NBC memo later made indisputable what had always been clear to anyone paying attention, he was cancelled because NBC was, along with virtually every other mass-media outlet, toeing the political line. (Even before his cancellation, Donahue had been required to maintain a 2-to-1 or better ratio of reichwing to "left" voices -- with "left" defined as anyone who even questioned the Iraq invasion then being readied.)
The media -- then and now -- are the propaganda arm of the same corporatocracy that owns and operates the Republican party, and a significant number of the most powerful Democrats. Their agenda goes far beyond the acquisition of money by selling ads. They are the reason wealth, income, opportunity, and power have become so narrowly concentrated over the last four decades. They are the reason that corporate profits and the icomes of the top 2% skyrocketed, while almost everyone else barely held on, or lost ground.
Any analysis of media behavior that does not start with this fundamental recognition of reality is at best incomplete, and at worst dead wrong.

Mel Kiper.
He only does one thing, predicts the draft order. And he sucks at it. But he comes around every year.

Yes, but with moronic organizations like the Lions screwing up their drafts every year, Kuiper may have an excuse. I'd watch NFL Network's coverage, if you have it on your cable system. Hell, their college football analysis show is better than anything ESPN has.

Most pundits are essentially unelected politicians -- folks who have a constituency/ideology/marketing strategy. Good analysis and accurate predictions aren't relevant.

Neither is insight.

If the purpose of punditry was to come up with useful angles that the public hasn't thought of, you wouldn't have the field dominated by Broders and Novaks and Wills (or Kos, Reynolds and Atrios) who are so completely predictable.

Just cuz somebody brought it up in a different thread, take the debate over torture over the last few years. Bush supporters essentially argued that waterboarding wasn't torture, and it was legal, anyway, and what wasn't legal was unauthorized, and besides: it's been all these years since there was a terrorist attack.

Bush critics generally insisted that torture was wrong and illegal, and (particularly online), there was a lot of gabbing about how Cheney must get an erotic thrill out of it.

There's nothing particularly wrong with somebody like Sullivan saying, this is a moral issue: if torture isn't wrong, nothing is wrong. But that's not exactly a fresh perspective explaining why a guy who made it US policy became President, and then got RE-elected.

A genuine insight, an analysis of the issues would probably have begun with the question: does it work? It obviously makes sense that no Bush supporter began with that question, cuz answering it wouldn't help their cause.

But what's interesting is that you'd have to look damned hard to find any Bush critic who began their attack on Bush from that perspective: why?

It's not because it was wrong -- torture doesn't work. It's not because it wouldn't have provided depth to the news: in fact, what moved the debate on torture from the Bush apologiae to where it is now, is the steady accumulation of contemporary evidence from actual interrogators, who demonstrated that in fact, torture doesn't work.

If there was no evidence that it fails, or if there was evidence that it DOES work -- then the public debate over it would be in a very different place, much more like 2003-5.

So you'd have to look elsewhere for why that perspective was lacking from pundits who criticized Bush, and that tells you: their function is essentially the same as politicians, without the responsibility: to please an audience's pre-conceived notions with familiar imagery.

I think a better analogy for the pundits would be Mr Blackwell and his Worst Dressed List. People aren't going to be informed, they are going to be entertained by someone making fun of someone else while they nod their heads in agreement. Pundits serve no educational purpose.

"Benen's continued adulation of the annoying and snarky Rachel Maddow continues to astound. She's obviously smart and her success is an interesting story, but her demeanor is offputting to say the least."

I guess you don't like people who give their opinions while being generally happy, pleasant, and polite?

She snarks those I believe deserve snarkdom, so I like her fine.

You've obviously touched a nerve regarding sports commentators. Like weather forecasters and investment consultants, they seem to be there to fill in time, with no hint of accountability for their accuracy.

As for political pundits, one of the things that sustains them is that their existence saves many journalists from actually unearthing meaningful sources (emphasis -- I said, "many", not "all"!). The only thing worse than one pundit is seeing the way these people interview and quote one another. It's like watching someone mistake Second Life for reality -- and then scolding yourself for watching in the first place.

Rachel Maddow's snarkiness is a feature, not a bug. She doesn't take seriously things that really shouldn't be taken seriously. Mockery is often the best response.

But what's interesting is that you'd have to look damned hard to find any Bush critic who began their attack on Bush from that perspective: why?

I don't think you have to look that hard at all. People like Josh Marshall and Glenn Greenwald were saying that torture is both (a) immoral, and (b) doesn't work anyway, since the beginning. What makes you think no one was saying this until recently?

All anyone had to do is watch the pundits spewing their blather during the run-up to the election. They kept punditicizing about how Obama was doing everything wrong and they all had advise on how he should conduct his campaign. Of course, they were basing their assumptions on yesterday’s political model. Obama, however, was using a different playbook and did things his way. And, he was always right! Nowadays I look at “pundits� as know-nothings who aren’t worth one iota of my attention.

It's not about ratings. Hasn't been for a long time. -smartalek

Agreed. TV news is a loss leader used to draw people in for the purpose of selling simplistic political messages. I would bet that very few who get their news on TV have ever heard of the Anbar Awakening or the Sadr Ceasefire. But everyone knows "the surge" was a great success. If you want to know anything about Afghanistan, you have to wait for an occasional 60 Minutes or Frontline piece.

It's not because news watchers don't care about these things. And I suspect the cable news channels could have bumped their ratings if they had shown more immature starlets getting drunk or puppies stuck in drain pipes instead of endless loops and discussions of "bitter" or Jeramiah Wright.

People like Josh Marshall and Glenn Greenwald DH Walker

Not to mention Roger Cressy and Richard Clarke

I have an issue of Sports Illustrated that dates from 12/8 that I just got around to looking at the other day. It says LT and the Chargers were in almost open revolt against Norv Turner and the Bucs were set to roll into the playoffs.

Sheridan: All anyone had to do is watch the pundits spewing their blather during the run-up to the election.

One of the sad effects of the rise of the pundit class is the devaluation of expertise. This goes beyond your standard right-wing anti-intellectualism to the unspoken belief that celebrity itself somehow magically conveys knowledge.

The sole source of Limbaugh's insight and analysis, for example, is his deep voice, and his willingness to be an asshole. Nothing else. Malkin's perceived intellectual acumen is based on the fact that she's cute, and her willingness to be an asshole. Nothing else.

Seriously. The Emperor's New Clothes issue here is that most of these clowns should be prefaced with "random person has opinion". I mean, who really gives a damn? Besides gullible morons, I mean.

I have to agree with comment above - far too much mental masterbation in this thread. You can make excuses for the pundits and pretend it is all about markets and attracting an audience blah blah blah blah.

That is all just a lie.

The MSM is owned by 4 global corporations that control more than 80 percent of ALL media most people see.

They decided long ago that these assets were better used to "catapult the propaganda", after all, each of these global corporations has assets in other segments, including the military-industrial complex (which is now a military-industrial/media complex).

Want to see proof? Just look at who the major advertisers are - other neocon/repug corporations. Because there is no real competition, MSM does not have to worry about us tuning out.

Especially since most are not ready to discuss what is really happening here, just witness all the crap being spewed here, all but one post evading the real issues.

An historical sports analogy: Michael Jordan was GREAT for the NBA -- but they also treated him unfairly, not calling fouls and letting him get away with travelling, etc.

But I don't recall hearing a steady drumbeat of play-by-play announcers pointing out "Well, Jordan just pushed the defender out of the way when he fell executed a brilliant fake on the second guy coming to cover before nailing a 20 foot jumper... but of course, if the ref had called the foul...."

It's not that sports talkers didn't mention it -- hell, Sam Smith wrote a book called "Jordan Rules". But there isn't much of a market for genuinely INDEPENDENT observers -- independent players within the game, sure, if you can get on the field or the court. But an observer is always second hand, so you gotta take sides, generally on behalf of a rival: FOR the Celtics (and their team play), against MJ and the Jordannaires.

The guy in the stands hollering that he knows the game better than the bloody guy in the arena is just ridiculous.

That's why sportswriters in the 20s covered for Babe Ruth, and it's why there wasn't any money in bitching, night after night, about Jordan getting away with violations that would have benched any junior high kid.

Same thing happens in political reporting, with this difference: sports fans are MUCH more sophisticated than the folks who follow politics, and accordingly tend to defer much more quickly to authority (or to argue with evidence).

Try to imagine a "Joe the Plumber" analogy in sports, I dare ya.

Yep. It's not about "entertainment" per se, or ratings really, let alone informing the public.

It is all a propaganda operation, on behalf of the corporatocracy, aimed at the smallish fraction of Americans, who like to feel they are somewhat well-informed and like to have opinions, at the water cooler the next day.

The featured pundits model behaviors and attitudes, which may be attractive to various opinionators in the audience, who will then spread this misinformation and stupidity to the body politic at large, via family and workplace conversations. For most of the audience, that the pundit is ill-informed is actually an advantage, since it facilitates the modelling. It would be much harder for someone to model their opinions and attitudes on, say, Paul Krugman, who is a genuine intellectual.

"Benen's continued adulation of the annoying and snarky Rachel Maddow continues to astound. She's obviously smart and her success is an interesting story, but her demeanor is offputting to say the least." . . . I guess you don't like people who give their opinions while being generally happy, pleasant, and polite?

Not to mention honest and intelligent? The lack of moral and intellectual seriousness is the most grievous loss I feel from the classic years of the news networks. Maddow may not be as self-consciously dignified as Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, and Edward R. Murrow, but she is scrupulously truthful, respects knowledge and intellect, and weighs issues based on their real-world importance, not their value as gossip or political gamesmanship.

She snarks those I believe deserve snarkdom, so I like her fine.

Got it. We live in an age of snark, and until the world changes I can readily filter it out if it is done with due regard to truth and moral worth.

imagine a sports commentator whose predictions are always wrong, whose rumors never pan out, and whose observations aren't based on reality

Um... that's, ah, MOST sports commentators too. Sports commentators have the exact same relation to sports as pundits to politics. Sure some are knowledgeable and insightful, some you learn from and those are the good ones. But there are plenty of terrible, terrible sports yaks that make a living just because they talk quickly and manage to be controversial. If you're entertaining that's all that matters.

Why assume that the pundits are anything but BS'ers?

These people, whether on TV or the op-ed pages, have opinions about absolutely everything. You name it - the economy, the Mideast, Russia, race relations, military strategy, financial markets, India-Pakistan, etc.

How in the world can anyone offer well-informed non-trivial insights on whatever pops up? The pundits are not universal geniuses. They are, by and large, mouthpieces for some political point of view, or else determined Broderites, who try to make routine talking points sound like serious analysis.

It's worth noting what "bullshit" really is, following the brilliant essay of Harry Frankfurt.

A bullshitter isn't the same as a liar. A liar cares what the truth is; a bullshitter doesn't.

That's why Frankfurt argues that bullshit is a worse enemy than lying.

. The pundits exist to fill that need. Their role is to make those shows entertaining

Like the great song-and-dance man Morton Kondracke and Mr. Entertainment himself, Fred Barnes!

imagine a sports commentator whose predictions are always wrong, whose rumors never pan out, and whose observations aren't based on reality

But what does Billy Packer have to do with all of this?

sports fans are MUCH more sophisticated than the folks who follow politics ... Try to imagine a "Joe the Plumber" analogy in sports, I dare ya.

I'm not entirely sure I follow the analogy, but if you mean that sports fans wouldn't identify with a random shmoe and make him their hero, consider the case in baseball of the white utility man, who's "scrappy" and "a fan favorite" and "plays the game the right way." Rex Hudler, Craig Counsell, etc.

It's entertaining to watch ignorant morons punditting on the teevee? You coulda fooled me.

I'm shocked nobody has mentioned financial pundits, especially those on CNBC. Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow, Maria Bartiromo, et al. have been constistently wrong more than political and sports commmentators, hands down.

A sample:

No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble.
—Jim Cramer, CNBC commentator, Mar. 11, 2008
(Five days later, JPMorgan Chase took over Bear Stearns with government help, nearly wiping out shareholders)

Day after day these clowns tell people to get into the market. Every down day is an opportunity to buy undervalued stocks. Every rally is proof that we're on our way back to 13,000. The difference between financial pundits and the political (or sports) variety is that they are responsible for people losing their life savings and retirement funds. Mistakes are never acknowledged; the perma-bull pep rally continues unabated after the worst year in stocks since 1933.

Being a pundit means having an opinion on the future. Might as well predict coin flips. They are so stupid. The whole goal is the create reasonable sounding arguments essentially out of whole cloth.

imagine a sports commentator whose predictions are always wrong, whose rumors never pan out, and whose observations aren't based on reality. After a while, one would hope, the audience would stop taking that commentator seriously, and he/she would go away.

And yet Mel Kiper is still considered an authority on the NFL draft.

And, then, there is that great prognosticator at MSNBC, BillO Olbermann, who made two predictions, last year. One that the Seattle Mariners would win the AL West (They finished with the second worst record in major league baseball) - The other was that Obama would become the next President.

Well, at least, he was one out of two. And predicted the far more important one.

"The way I see it, in a perfect world, political pundits on television would be the on-air equivalents of newspaper columnists."

Just kill me now. Or convince me that Steve was working at an irony level way above my head.

What do David Brooks, Bill Kristol, David Brower, Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, Mona Charen, Michelle Malkin and George Will have in common? Besides characteristics that are unprintable on a family blog? They are all nationally syndicated newspaper columnists. The notion that putzes like Morning Joe would be delivering better content if they were just following the example of the uber-putz Krauthammer in "not only informing an audience, but giving readers a sense of context and perspective" is so mind numbingly off the mark as to convince me I am celebrating the wrong holiday. Is it really January Fools' Day already?

There are some good columnists out there, mostly on regional papers that get some national syndication. But for the most part unless their byline reads 'Paul Krugman' or (mostly but not always) 'Frank Rich' the notion that TV talking heads should be taking their lead from the major columnists is just as nutty as thinking major cheerleader squads should be taking tips from the Michelle Malkin video.

I need more booze, or perhaps less booze. But trust me the days that newspaper columnists were kings of the world are long behind us leaving us with mostly hacktacular replacements.

For an excellent regional, well, at least local, columnist, suggest you peruse David Sarasohn, the Progressive voice, at the Oregonian. Plus, in the PNW, we, also, have two excellent political cartoonists; David Horsey at the Seattle P-I and Jack Ohman at the Oregonian. Both, also, run political commentaries on occasion. Ohman ran a classic following the last election. BlueGirlRed State picked it up and ran it on one of her blogs. Global, we, dearly, miss you, Lady.

I think the sports analogy is very misplaced, because it understates the difference between sports punditry and political punditry. In terms of the latter, you're asked to analyze things beforehand based on quite a few factors you can't possibly know, even as the best in the business. If someone had said before the season New England was the best team in the league and win the Superbowl they'd be wrong, but would it be spectacularly bad analysis considering the Brady injury in week 1? Or does the success of Matt Cassel make it an even stronger analysis, given the success a backup who hasn't started a game since high school had there?

Political punditry, on the other hand, largely works with a large degree of known quantities, namely poll numbers. If you're trying to predict who is going to win a football game between two reasonably even matched teams, at the end of the day you're just making a guess. The game is probably going to turn on a penalty, a mistake, a referee's bad call, or something else that you can't possibly predict. But if I'm trying to predict the winner of the Iowa caucus, I've got a good amount of data regarding voter preferences to go on, so there's probably not any reason for me to be spectacularly wrong. And that's basically what Ezra gets right; if pundits acted responsibly, political punditry would be really, really boring, and the admission that these people aren't working with anything you don't have access to wouldn't lend itself to drawing many eyeballs.

What makes you think that print columnists are any more accurate or less inane than the "pundits" of the electronic media? In a later Political Animal post, there's a link to a year-end list of predictions that turned out to be dead wrong. I challenge you to read it and find a single one that Maureen Dowd didn't promote -- indeed, didn't treat as established fact.

Back in the late 90s, the magazine Brill's Content did a regular survey of pundit predictions and how well they turned out. No one ever got less than 1/3rd right and no one got more than 2/3rds right, The "talented" folks got predictions more than half-right.
As to what it all means, when predictions become part of political commentary, politics becomes a game, sorta like when the press corps turned their attention to the 2000 election and pondered such matters as Al Gore's honesty.
Making politics into a game meant G.W. Bush got into office.
Serious bloggers have shown that politics and predictions don't need to have anything to do with each other.

They can't all be Pat Buchanans.