Partisan Pundit Donna Brazile: Let’s Get Partisan Pundits Off The Airwaves

Every year, a crack team of curmudgeons gets together at the Washington Post to point out ten extremely important and/or useful things in American culture to erase from memory, never to be seen again. Last year, they suggested we forget about television, the Vice Presidency, and one of the Nobel prizes that actually matters. As those efforts were so resoundingly successful last year, they’re back with an even longer list for 2010, raining on the parade of internet memes, lawns (?), and, sadly, the cable news pundits we all know and love.

Fighting the good fight against “GOP shills” and “Democratic hacks” is… Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, who once worked as Al Gore‘s 2000 presidential campaign manager. Really. The only way a column like this could be more hypocritical is having Glenn Beck write a screed against chalkboards.

So how does a partisan cable news talking head argue against partisan cable news talking heads? By calling partisans on the other side of the aisle crazy, destructive, and useless. “Instead of partisan talking heads or mad hatters from the ‘tea party’ preaching their views on, say, health care and taxes,” she argues, “let’s hear from doctors and insurance professionals.” “Mad hatters”? Zing! Score one for the Democrats! But remember boys and girls, we must “get rid of the left-vs.-right commentators who are just out scoring points for their team. This sort of opinion-mongering is not only boring and predictable, it is destructive of the truth.”

“If a single move could restore civility to politics,” she continues, “that is it.” She’s right, of course– no public servants have ever said anything outrageous or been uncivil to each other. Only members of the media are rowdy and unprofessional, always. She ends her attack by making one final plea to keep her job, just in case anyone takes her piece seriously: “Some pundits could remain as political analysts. (I’m not crazy, am I?).”

Putting the fact that this is the opinion of a professional pundit aside, Brazile is absolutely right that a cable news world without pundits would be a much more civil one. But who wants the basic misconception that politics are “civil” to be considered indisputable fact, just because things would be more pleasant if that were true? CNN already tried to do away with the shouty pundit prototype when they canceled Crossfire, and now that they are consistently behind Fox News and MSNBC in the ratings, the idea of bringing back Crossfire has been front and center in many brainstorming experiments on how to “save” CNN. Yes, compared to MSNBC and Fox, there is a strong argument to be made that CNN is the most civil place on cable news, but if the ratings are any indication, American audiences prefer the ugly truth about politics to an airbrushed alternative reality.

Then there’s the fact that her claim that pundits have no important insight to contribute to a political news story is patently false. Most pundits are either political scholars or have been deeply entrenched in the political process themselves– just like Brazile. To suggest that James Carville or Karl Rove are somehow not representative of the type of people that tend to succeed in the political landscape is wishful thinking. She has a point that if an individual does not contribute anything but talking points to a show, with no experience or insight to add to the topic, they shouldn’t be on TV. The most obvious examples in recent memory are McCain-Palin spokesman Tucker Bounds and talk radio host Kevin James, taken down by Campbell Brown and Chris Matthews, respectively, and not really seen on television again since. People who do not know what they are talking about should not be on TV, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who is on TV doesn’t know what they are talking about– nor does it mean that the people who do know what they’re talking about have not been efficient in getting rid of anyone who doesn’t meet their standard.

If you have somehow ended up here on Mediaite, then you probably don’t need me to tell you that TV pundits are some of the most boisterous, hilarious and downright fascinating people in the world. They are the salt of the news world, the media equivalent of that terrible grape flavoring that makes cough syrup a little less disgusting, or at least comically so. They’re there to provide insight into what people with actual power think and behave like and simultaneously sacrifice some of their own dignity in the name of entertainment, especially if they once held the positions of those they now critique. It’s disingenuous to claim that all the disciplinary problems in the political world will magically disappear along with those pesky pundits, as if politics were not the gritty, shouty, dirty and, as a result, much more fair than the facade of objectivity Brazile is clamoring for.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.