In thinking about Duncan’s top ten biggest wankers in American media since he started his shitty blog ten years ago, I had to discover what distinguishes a wanker from a simply malevolent paid asshole. For example, did Robert Novak truly wank?
I think a key component of wanking is that you pretend to be offering good-faith advice. I think that rules people like Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, and Robert Novak out. And it rules people like Richard Cohen, David Broder, Tom Friedman, and Peggy Noonan most definitely in.
But it doesn’t have to be advice. Shameless sucking up to authority also qualifies, which is why Chris Matthews is one of the biggest wankers in the history of punditry.
Another category could be reserved for Maureen Dowd. Treating serious political and policy matters as a sideshow is a form of x-treme wanking. As is an art-form perfected by David Brooks, which involves shaping every argument to fit your preconceived idealized never-gonna-happen utopian ideals.
It’s a slippery thing, trying to define what it is to wank.
Who were the biggest wankers of the last ten years? Here’s my shot at it.
1. David Broder- he wins for defining the genre, and for getting a lifetime achievement award.
2. (shared) Chris Matthews and Peggy Noonan- won on Hardball the day Bush landed on the aircraft carrier to announce “Mission Accomplished.” Noonan admired his codpiece while Matthews announced that everyone kind of liked Bush because he had a sunny nobility.
3. James Carville- for defending Scooter Libby.
4. Tom Friedman- for declaring every six months for five years that we needed to stay in Iraq for another six months. Also, for saying that we needed to go to Iraq, whip out our man-sticks, and tell some Arab men to Suck.on.this.
5. Richard Cohen- for all but about two columns he wrote between 2002 and 2012.
6. Fred Hiatt- for single-handedly ruining the opinion section of the Washington Post.
7. Bill Keller- for destroying the reputation of the New York Times.
8. Joe Klein- for being the most aggressively wrong “liberal” in America for almost the entirety of the Bush administration.
9. Maureen Dowd- for focusing on the wrong thing every day for her entire life.
10. David Brooks- for being David Brooks.
I’m sure your list will be different.
I know she has been forced into a sort of silence for a while, but shouldn’t Judy Miller get at least a mention here?
no, because she was very clearly a malevolent paid asshole. Also, an intel asset.
I am proud to say that I have never seriously read…and very rarely even skimmed…any of the columnists that you mention, and the TV wankers like Carville and Mathews? They are why God invented the remote.
Ignore these fools to death.
Please.
They all thrive on your attention.
On our attention.
Like dat.
What would happen if they gave a wankfest and no one watched? No one objected; no one agreed…no one did nuthin’.
What would happen?
These fools’d be forced to be greeters at WalMart, burger flippers at White Castle and middle school principals, that’s what.
Turn them the fuck off.
Please.
AG
I hate to break this to you but in general the only people who watch, read, or take these people seriously are Beltway Insiders. That’s why these people are called “Wankers.” So us watching/ignoring really makes no difference on whether or not they exist and affect policy.
Seabe!!! You jest, right?
These creatures have audiences in the millions. They affect elections upon which the very fate of humanity may quite possibly turn.
What we have here is the lives and deaths of billions of innocent people being controlled by the public masturbations of a bunch of well paid obsessive-compulsive exhibitionists.
Without people like Chris Mathews there would be no Barack Obama to sign the authoritarian, security state-enabling National Defense Authorization Act.
Without right wing columnists and commentators like Peggy “Oh!!! The Codpiece!!!” Noonan there would have been no George W. Butch or Darth Cheney…no Iraq War, no slaughter of tens of thousands, no ongoing crisis in the Islamic world.
When you say this it is like a stone cold heroin junkie saying “Oh. Well. This isn’t a serious drug, after all. It doesn’t make much difference if a few users indulge in it, and…I’m only skin popping, anyway.”
Get real.
You…and most of the rest of the population of the so-called “developed” world…are strung out on these people. You’ve gotta have ’em, or else.
Or else what?
You have no idea, because you’ve never seriously tried to kick.
Proof?
Sure.
You can’t quit.
Prove me wrong?
Sure.
Go cold turkey for three weeks.
Betcha can’t do it.
Prove me wrong.
I dare ya.
AG
An audience in the millions? Oh no! Bill O’Reilly peaked at 3.1 million viewers. We live in a country of 300+ million people. Practically no one cares about these people. The reason they have power is because pundits make believe they do. It’s the Beltway Insiders who give them power.
3.1 million is “in the millions” at last count. Not always the same set of millions, and not always just on TV. The spread of this pernicious shit goes all over the place, seabe. Mentions of someone like O’Reilly by other commentators…pro or con. (The “Call me anything, but spell my name right.” principle. Believe it.) In the newspapers. On the Sunday morning wankfests. In the blogs.
C’mon…are you that blindered?
AG
And considering I’ve grown up in this age, I’ve “gone without” for 6 months at a time when I was grounded.
Solitary, eh?
That’s your copout?
Nice.
Nice and lame.
AG
Grounded at my house wasn’t “stuck inside.” It was “no computer.”
Metaphor doesn’t hold much water for you, does it?
Deep.
AG
Another Link you might want to look at. Rush Limbaugh is not nearly as powerful as he pretends to be.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/rush-limbaugh-ratings_b_1320144.html
some also-rans:
for pretending to be a tough sell while stovepiping the weekly talking point – tim russert (deserving of top ten status)
for trying to be tim russert (and willing to dance with rove) – david gregory
for sheer insipidness – wolf blitzer, cokie roberts
for guaranteed fake balance – howard kurtz
for coasting on a dead rep – bob woodward
Definitely ogreed(!) – especially regarding the lazy and oh-so-pompous Timmeh Russert.
Living, as I do, in a far outpost of the American empire I rarely get to see or read any of the luminaries listed here except when they happen to be linked to by some post of yours Boo. However your listing and discussion of the wanking phenomenon in general is worthy of much more extended treatment. Can I suggest you forward an extended version of this story to a range of book publishers with the suggestion that you write a book on America’s Greatest Wankers?
I think it would have everything a publisher could want in a successful book – sex appeal, an illuminating and corrosive analysis of what makes American Opinion Formers tick, and the self-indulgent and messy end such activity invariably ends up in.
As far a writing the book is concerned, I think we could all help as a sort of a group projects. You could write a short chapter on each of your top ten/twenty, and your correspondents here could chip in with our favourite excerpts and video snippets.
As far as defining the genre is concerned, I think you could also include an important global dimension: US Wankers are all US imperialists who believe in the innate superiority of all things American – and treat almost everyone else with either well meaning patron-ism or ill disguised contempt. In many ways they define what is leading to the USA’s decline – a mixture of arrogance and ignorance on a truly global scale.
We have our own wankers over here of course as well. It would be interesting to do a comparative analysis of analytical methods and outcomes. Truly there is a great book to be written about the wanking phenomenon!
Har – let’s have a circle-wank!
This is a brilliant comment, Frank.
I’d need a more concise definition of wanking.
No I don’t think so, but I’m sure we could all come up with various humorous attempts.
Your book could either be organised around the top 10-50 wankers in action or around the the typical phenomena that can singly or in combination be characterised as typical of wanking (or both). A phenomenological study, in other words.
See also Torpid Bunny’s characteristic phenomena below.
I haven’t read any of those clowns in so long, I can’t really remember if they’re dead or alive. Is Friedman over at the Times still? Isn’t Broder dead?
How could you tell?
I would add anyone who has ever appeared on Morning Joe.
Wanking has no doubt always existed, but modern American wanking would seem to be defined by some of the following elements:
-Pretentiously high-minded concern trolling/pearl clutching about all political expression to one’s left combined with studious ignorance of un-american extremism of the modern right. The professional wanker seems to premise this “impartial” view on the idea that it’s always and forever 1968 or 1984.
-Self-congratulatory fluff about the worthiness of war mongers and their war mongering. Studious ignorance of horrible record of failed american military interventions and the massive public deceptions inevitably involved. The foundation seems to be the a priori seriousness and “toughness” of aerial bombardment or foreign occupation. Plus war is a savvy move because presidents get to strut around as the “Commander in Chief” that the country is “rallying behind”.
-Pseudo hard-headed fluff about the “inevitable economic necessity” of starving granny and children combined with studious ignorance of last century of economic history. Either combined with feeble attempts at trickle down economics or a complete omission of tax-rate discussion. So basically any public discussion premised on the primacy of the debt “crisis” qualifies as wanking.
This is a big topic and it would be interesting to go into the subtleties. Certain tropes seem to only appear in the work of paid assholes or their willing dupes. For instance, professional wankers almost never talk about the mythical burden of “regulations”.
Friedman won first place.
I can’t disagree, but I still think my list is more accurate.
Broder is the Emeritus of wankers, even in death. Nothing that Friedman ever said or did could compare to the majesty of the flight deck Hardball episode. And nothing quite explains Washington wankery like James Carville.
Yet, among living pundits who have a regular column, Friedman stands alone. Well done, Duncan