This ought to give one pause:
>. . . . Bob Herbert is a sensible person who usually assesses things more accurately than his colleagues, regularly hits the streets to report on the world outside, shines a light on people and issues that deserve far more attention than they usually get, and tells you things you really ought to know but don’t. But here’s the catch: you don’t read Bob Herbert. Or, if you say you do, I don’t believe you.
I don’t believe him. Then again, I always lie.
What the hell is the point of that article? Aside from it being long and boring in the same way that the author calls Herbert’s form of journalism boring. As a backhanded critique of liberal editorialists, it fails, or at least does nothing new, but reinforces the old tired troupe that Liberals are out of touch with the sexy journalism that the conservatives bring to the table. Maybe the people just need to wise up.
Nevyn,
I don’t believe your lies about lying.
Jem,
Look. This how we do things in the sexy business.
The author’s conclusion that “Herbert is boring” is unsupported by the evidence that appears in the article, which consists in 1) Herbert being cited by other journalists and bloggers less often, and 2) unscientific opinion sampling of other journalists. At best, this tells us that Herbert is boring to other Washington journalists.
It’s possible that Herbert is cited infrequently by other journalists because he is boring. However, it’s also possible that other journalists ignore his analysis because it disagrees with their own. After all, if Herbert has the distinction of almost always being “right”, then other journalists must be, on average, more “wrong”. Of course, no one ever believes himself or herself to be wrong. Instead, they think Herbert is. When circumstances eventually prove otherwise, no one ever remembers what Herbert wrote because they ignored him in the first place, and have since moved on.
Also, it’s possible that Atrios, Josh Marshall, et al. cite Friedman, Dowd, and Brooks as often as they do in order to criticize those writers. In that case, I guess one could say those writers are “exciting”, provided one considers the elevated blood pressure, throbbing veins, and furrowed brow brought on by the outrageously bad reasoning in a Brooks column to be “exciting”.
That sounds right to me David. I think he also argued that Herbert doesn’t seem to drive the discussion as much as people like Brooks, Will, and others. That seems true as well. Nonetheless, I’ve resolved to read Herbert as often as I can.