Punditry: Desktop Publishing Redux
I'm just old enough to remember the introduction of desktop publishing software back in the 1980s. Overnight, anyone who had access to a computer could buy some software and become an Instant Graphic Designer.
Of course, with great power comes great responsibility, but nobody really cared about any of that. Loads of secretaries, personal assistants, executives, and small business owners churned out visual obscenities with the kind of wanton glee that would make a Roman orgymaster blush.
Need to cram out an invitation to a party? Sure, go ahead and use all the fonts available — that's what they're there for! Yes, you should center everything down the middle of the page — to hell with anyone actually being able to read and comprehend the message. And please, please, don't talk to me about white space; we gotta use the whole page.
Fast forward 20 years and what we have is the equivalent revolution going on in the mediasphere. Blogging and podcasting tools have made pundits of us all, but nowhere is this more true than in political punditry. Set up a Posterous or Wordpress account, give a guy a Flip HD, and let it rip.
Ooh, the president has appeared on the View? Well, that's really bad, you know, very unpresidential, he shouldn't have done that. If he hadn't gone on the View? Well, he's obviously out of touch with the concerns of a vast demographic (women) in this great country of ours. Why does this terrorist-loving foreign usurper hate America?
Regrettably, this isn't exactly new (remember how the pundits tore out Bush 41's nether regions because he'd never seen a checkout scanner at a grocery store?) but hey, now we all get to enjoy the half-witted ramblings of not just the mainstream media elite (whatever the hell that means) but also every other person with an axe to grind.
Naturally, all of this is leading to some kind of Pundit Arms Race, where each side in the debate rallies more troops until you have some kind of Pundit World Cup thing going on, which is a lovely image, particularly when you think about Andrew Breitbart huffing and puffing up and down the field. But wait, somewhere along the lines, I jumped the metaphor shark and we've moved away from desktop publishing to soccer. Alas.
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