ATRIOS MAKES A GREAT POINT

He's been doing a "Wanker of the Decade" review and had these words about Will Saletan which are widely applicable:

The Lords of Slate, including Saletan, come from the waning days of the era of High Punditry, where people with no particular knowledge or skills, but who are truly the right sort of people, from the right schools, with the right friends, would send their pronouncements down from the mountain onto the grateful population below. They are for some reason granted the magic power of punditry, the ability to survey the entire body of knowledge on a particular topic, and issue their final infallible decree in time for their deadline. All the experts in the world be damned, give The Lords an afternoon and an intern and The Truth can be determined, usually by determining that The Partisans On Both Sides Are Wrong, while arriving at their proclamations without nasty partisan preconceptions or agenda involved.