The Maudlin Pseudo-Pundit… I must admit, I cannot restrain a smile when I read the awful, mawkish whining of Steven Den Beste over the strain of maintaining a weblog and why he had to quit to save his own life. In order to really savor this surreal display of first class whimpering, Den Beste must be quoted at length (which is his favorite mode of writing):

I've been suffering for years from a genetically-caused degenerative disease. For the last year or so, the only way I was able to continue posting was by taking increasing doses of very powerful stimulants. (Understand that they were palliative; there's no cure or treatment for the underlying disease, and no one knows what causes it. The only reason it's known to be genetic is because it is found in family lines. In my case it was my father's family.)

 

Those prescription drugs have serious side effects which I put up with in order to be able to keep writing for the site. But as that year went on, my enjoyment in writing for the site drained away.

 

It's entirely possible that there were thousands of satisfied readers who enjoyed what I wrote, but I never heard from most of them. 80% or more of my email consisted of kibitzing, criticism, and other forms of ankle-biting. "Ignore them" someone said, but that's easy for you to say. Ignoring one or two such letters isn't too hard. But when it goes on like that day after day, week after week, dozens of such letters each week, I reached the point where writing posts became a duty, something I had to force myself to do, not something I looked forward eagerly to doing. Instead of looking forward to the process of writing, I cringed about the negative email I was guaranteed to receive in response.

I have not seen bawling this unrestrained by self-respect since probably the fourth grade. 

I hope the reader can forgive me for being a teensy wheensy bit skeptical about this mysterious, unnamed degenerative disease (presumably it affects the brain and allows Den Beste to enjoy prodigious quantities of anime).  To be sure perhaps he's really deathly ill, but it is difficult to conceive of an ailment that allows one to natter on endlessly about cartoons of young Lesbian robot girls yet forbids the scribbling of verbose punditry.  Are there separate brain centers devoted to each, such that it is possible to injure one faculty but not the other?  The brain is truly a mysterious thing, but people who make ridiculous excuses for why they can't withstand critical reactions are not so mysterious.

Den Beste has always been and is here given to false humility, the kind that comes in a slimy encasement of self-pity:

I posted for three and a half years, and made a small contribution to getting this nation through the worst part of the crisis. I cannot help any longer; you'll have to rely on other people now to carry the load. I gave it everything I had to give; there's nothing left now.

Yes, but for the long-windedness of our amateur pundits, the ship of state would have been lost at sea in those dark days of crisis and deliberation.  Now these once-proud armchair veterans lie strewn across the streets like yesterday's heroes, emotionally crippled, unable to function, their brains rotting with unfinished arguments over anti-terrorist measures and Iraq invasion prospects, their spirits blanched from a hundred erroneous prophecies.  This is the great injustice:  the way America treats her fallen pseudo-warriors.

It is just sickening.

Den Beste is not a horrible writer but he lacks discipline and his entries often reflected this.  Worse, in terms of keeping a weblog, he was incapable of taking criticism.  He could dish it out alright, on message boards or on his weblog, but he was very poor with counter-arguments and his spine liquified during any altercation that got five words past pleasantries.  In fact not all writers can take it, and each has his own way of responding or not responding to criticism, but Den Beste's blubbering is over the top.  I do not recall anyone worse than him in this regard.

Like Princess Di, he leaves a nation mourning:  Steven Den Beste, the People's Pundit

So what is the point of heaping more criticism on him?  ("The fallen pseudo-warrior, his body trembling from infirmity, is cruelly ignored while the wealthy email critics dine like pigs nearby.")  Apart from the pleasure I obtain from it, because it seems to me that much of the value of weblogs as an outlet for vox populi comes from their ability to produce worthwhile arguments.  Arguments must withstand criticism to be called worthwhile, particularly arguments over divisive political issues.

Amidst all their excesses, weblogs have had a salutary effect on the national debate, one part of which has been to focus a very critical eye on the largely useless professional pundit class.  As Daily Howler is fond of pointing out, these are people who are too frightened, too lazy, or too complacent to dig beyond the surface of many issues; all they have time for is chummy gabbing back and forth or catty witticisms.  Many of them carry on like regular movie stars with massive egos and salaries to match.

In addition to criticizing the worst failings of this bunch, weblogs have shown that you don't really need these people for what they do best – there are any number of weblogs that give you the same or better quality of writing and all the chummy back-and-forth you can stand.  No one pays these weblog writers for the very good reason that their services aren't worth that much, and neither are those of the professional pundit class.  (Keep in mind that pundits are incredibly shiftless creatures; most consider looking a word up in the dictionary "research".  Therefore the argument that journalism has "standards" and weblogs do not is a spurious one that relies on confusion between punditry and reporting.)

One thing I long to see in the future is the gradual elimination of the professional pundit, at least insofar as he has any influence on the world.  Punditry, sometimes called "analysis" by pretentious writers, can be practiced without any qualification – our newspapers, magazines, and television programs routinely prove it by giving space for pundits to spout off on all kinds of issues with which they've had the briefest of associations.  (I've had more in-depth experience with my one night stands than Chris Matthews has ever had with, say, Social Security or anti-terrorism.)

Another noteworthy accomplishment would be the abandonment of the patronizing institution of Letters to the Editor, which in every paper is regarded as a joke, a safe place for malcontents and compulsive letter writers to play with themselves.

Why would you expect an editorial staff to value criticism of it, after all?  Most of them are blowhards who for years grimly climbed the career ladder waiting for their chance to enjoy the limited prestige that comes with their current station.  The other point of a weblog is that it is (or should be) an entirely independent entity, not subject even to psychological influence such as that which a newspaper may have over its ombudsman.  It is, in short, an ideal platform for advancing debate and forcing news media to be more responsive.  You don't even have to suck up to anyone on the local alternative weekly flyer editorial board (a hairy Lesbian, some angry black guy, and a dishevelled, brooding asshole with 15 Kerry stickers on the back of his 1995 Geo Metro).

And here, finally,* we get back to Den Beste, who seemed to be working toward the idea of the weblog removed from any influence that wasn't invited by its writer.  Criticism hurts, please stop sending it (and he took this to the extreme of you're killing me).  This is the weblog as editorial page, handed down for your consideration – and please know that your feedback is upsetting, so stop giving it.  The only difference is that newspaper editors don't typically quit in a huff, they just pretend they're too important to listen to sniping from the rabble.

If Den Beste needs the protection of a Happy Thoughts bubble then he shouldn't have a weblog.  Instead of encouraging his latest sobs of woe, his supporters should be chastisng him for being so unreliable.