On the Iraq war in particular, he's shown something other than courage in fact, what ever the opposite of courage is, he's pretty much shown that. Klein has never been a favorite among lefty bloggers although purportedly liberal himself, he comes off more as a smug apologist for accepted Washington consensus than as a shrewd analyst. Joe Klein, longtime columnist for Time magazine and anonymous author of Primary Colors, is doing his best to inadvertently prove the dramatic superiority of the blog model for developing pundits. The point is not that what rises to the top is exclusively meritorious it's that merit is one of the ways in which you really can rise to the top. Admittedly, you can also be a success by spouting complete nonsense, if you do it in a way that enough people approve of. Word will spread, and you can be a success. Say things that are interesting, well-informed, and thoughtfully presented, and someone will link to you.
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Despite various well-documented biases and ossification of hierarchies, the blogosphere is still largely a meritocracy, in which success is driven by the free market of links. Maureen Dowd will be taking up space on the New York Times Op-Ed pages for decades to come. It's as if the NBA drafted players straight out of high school, but then they never had to play a game they all just received long-term contracts, with salaries based on how good they look during lay-up drills and dunk contests. Rarely are columnists fired for not making sense once they claim that status, they tend to keep it, no matter how pointless or uninformed their work turns out to be.
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A column or regular TV appearances are granted. What typically happens in the MSM is that, by some quite mysterious process, an editor or publisher decides that some particular person with opinions would make a good pundit, whether its because of the sparkle of their prose or the cut of their jib. Problem is, these are subjective criteria. The best pundits, presumably, should be those that have the most interesting opinions, and are the best at explaining and arguing for them. That, in principle, is why we have pundits in the first place they are supposed to be better-informed than average, and generally capable of intelligently articulating the opinions they have. Not everyone has opinions that are interesting, or the ability to defend them persuasively using information and rational argument.
Journalism requires work, but anyone can have an opinion, and most everyone does. When it comes to opinionmongering, though, we are faced with a completely different kettle of fish - ones with sharp teeth and short tempers. Annoying as they may be at times, the MSM are still the primary source for information about what is going on in the world.
You know, calling people on the telephone, traveling to places where interesting things are happening, stuff like that. Bloggy triumphalism can be tiresome, and the MainStream Media aren't going to be replaced in the foreseeable future, if only because they actually put a great deal of effort and resources into real reportage. We have an interesting illustration of how the internet is changing the nature of political punditry, in the form of the ongoing spat between Joe Klein and the liberal blogosphere.
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