Every time I feel a little presumptious about posting an opinion on a blog, I bring up any current column authored by Paul Krugman, Eleanor Clift, Johathan Alter, Maureen Dowd, or Helen Thomas…Hell, if they can take money with a straight face for what they put out, there’s no possible foul in me venturing an opinion for free.

Eleanor Clift’s latest gem was a 500-word sneer at undecided “swing voters.” She quoted Donna Brazile and a few random swing voters from one of Brazile’s focus groups in order to characterize undecided voters generally as clueless, stupid, irresponsible. Clift has taken an easily quantified, fairly straightforward sociological phenomenon and treated it with less care, precision and seriousness than your average soap opera digest writer.

No effort to even define or quantify the “swing voters.” No reference to any research. No effort to sift through the research and evaluate possible explanations. No attempt at independent thought or hypotheses, or attempt to test those hypotheses in light of her experience as a journalist.

Ditto for Krugman and nearly any topic outside economics. Dowd doesn’t deserve a comment.

Why does such laziness deserve a platform like the NYT OpEd? How does one gain such status? As the internet and blogosphere expand people’s access to expert analysis– or even just conscientious analysis, hell, analysisperiod– can the privileged position of our MSM blowhards be sustained?

pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain