Pundits at Sea: A Modest Proposal

© 2009 John P Hewitt

In this festive season of health care reform, global warming debate, Obama-ridiculing, and Palin-watching, pundits constitute a growing threat to public decency, democracy, the economy, world peace, and my mental health. This problem has a solution: Assemble the newspaper columnists, cable news talking heads, radio talk show hosts, bloggers, and their ilk — all of them — and hold them incommunicado in a location from which they can’t escape. Maybe “assemble” isn’t the right word. “Rendition” is closer to my meaning. If it’s good enough for terrorists, after all, it should be good enough for Charles Krauthammer.

Where to put them? A maximum security prison might suffice, but the Thomson Correctional Facility in Illinois will likely be filled with Guantanamo Bay inmates. Alcatraz is too close to civilization. Besides, prison seems a cruel and unusual measure, even for the likes of George Will. So, what to do?

I propose chartering the Oasis of the Seas, the world’s newest and largest cruise ship, which has 16 decks and 24 restaurants -- enough space to let Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann keep a respectful distance and provide for the culinary life style to which Rush Limbaugh is evidently accustomed. The ship has room for 6296 passengers, which should be enough to hold everybody, including a reasonable part of the blogosphere. Load it up, provision it, and sail it to some isolated part of the South Pacific from which the only escape is via teleportation or some very impressive swimming and shark avoidance. Leave it there at least until November 7, 2012. Permit all the incoming media they can stand, but no outgoing communications except for an automated signal to reassure the world periodically that the ship hasn’t moved or sunk. Otherwise, nothing: no satellite phones, ham radios, signaling flags, or anything else that would enable the inmates to let the world know what they are thinking. They can talk to one another and to the ship’s crew (recruited from hard-core convicted violent felons) but not to us.

When I say all the pundits, I do mean all of them. True, there will be some good apples mixed in with the bad and the innocent will share their voyage with the guilty. I regret this, but I don’t see any other way to do it. Fair is fair. Hence, Paul Krugman and Rachel Maddow, each of whom has a fund of knowledge and an actual functioning brain, will have to live in proximity to Bill Kristol and David Broder, who manifestly don’t. Maureen Dowd, who, one hopes, will encounter someone who can explain Jane Austen’s characters to her, will have to room with her more coherent colleague Gail Collins. Eric Alterman can duke it out with Marty Peretz and perhaps even throw him overboard, which would pollute the seas but improve the pundit gene pool.

The most obvious benefit that will flow from this arrangement is silence — blessed, precious, golden silence, something we all crave and richly deserve. Beyond that, it’s hard to predict. The cable channels will have more time for Rocky and Bullwinkle reruns, or they can fight global warming by shutting down a few outlets and thus reducing electricity demand. A few people will suffer from pundit withdrawal, but a bit of Prozac™ will help them through the rough patches and they will feel better in the long run. Politicians will have only each other and their constituents to talk to, and when John McCain doesn’t have an almost weekly gig on Meet the Press he may finally realize he lost the 2008 Presidential election. Sarah Palin will be on her own — no more “gotcha” questions, but also no more media assists. The Republican party will lose its leaders and principal theorists.

The course of events on board will depend on the social arrangements imposed on the passengers. I propose a strict caste system, in which the most outspokenly conservative pundits are required to live in the cruise ship equivalent of steerage, while the most outspokenly progressive get the best digs. That should bring a bit of realism to their discussions of “class warfare.” Anger will no doubt be a prominent emotion. No weapons will be allowed on board, but fisticuffs will be permitted, Marquess of Queensbury rules optional. If in the end a few people are thrown overboard — or, modestly I propose, used to supplement a food supply cleverly calculated to run out just before the 2010 mid-term elections — it will be no great tragedy.

Who knows? If the ship contains a sufficient number of intellectually (and reproductively) fertile pundits, and is kept isolated long enough, a new biological form might evolve. One imagines pundit babies of the future who grasp economics, are immune to viral political narratives, and value intellectual honesty and humility. And if pundit evolution goes the other way, we can send the ship on another extended cruise. Or just torpedo it.