Pundit Fatigue

A week on, and the hot air is just getting started. I've read scads of op-ed pieces, listened to dozens of commentaries, and heard on-the-spot analyses from everyone from Wolf Blitzer to my postman. And I'm fucking sick of it.

Take Grant's essay, for instance. Like it or loathe it, no one seems to be asking the obvious question: was this column really necessary at all? I mean, is the world really clamoring to hear what some doped-up funnybook scribbler thinks about international terrorism?

In the mass media, everybody who gets a microphone stuck in hir face for a living is being called upon to make a statement. Baseball players, actresses, pop stars—all are being pressed into service as sociopolitical commentators—people who haven't any business commenting on anything besides the weather. And yet, in our insatiable hunger for opinion, we give 'em a forum. Has Britney issued a statement yet? What's Martha Stewart's take on the extradition question? I saw Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora doing an earnest Red Cross PSA 'tother day—Jon Bon Jovi, fa chrissake!

It's even worse on the 'net, where every fuckhead with a modem seems to think that s/he has, not just a right, but a sacred duty to hold and express an opinion, often at great length (yes, I am part of the problem: fuck you)—posting messages to message boards that really aren't messages at all, but manifestos—brooking no dialogue, no dissent.

Everybody's a know-it-all. Everybody's got an opinion, and you're all entitled to it. Everybody's a pundit.

Fuck the whole scabrous lot of 'em. I don't want to know what they think—I want to know what I think.

And I don't really want to think at all, right now.

I have no opinion about any of this: or if I do, you sure as hell don't need to know about it.