The Chattering Classes
It’s really noisy out there. “Conservative bloggers jab Obama on foreign languages.” (Huh?) Christie is getting divorced. There is a new cell phone. Angelina had twins. Microsoft cut the price of the Xbox 360. Freddie, Fannie, and Bernie Mac are a mess. Brett Favre wants to un-retire. There’s a new Batman movie.
The chattering classes are bleating and ululating. Except for Lou Dobbs—he’s braying. Iraq? Iran? Afghanistan? Forget about it. Mugabe—bad. Darfur—what’s that? Luckily, American political tradition allows for a lack of attention to the upcoming election until after Labor Day. Good luck figuring it out even then.
The problem as I see it is—given the immense amount of effort it would require for aspirants to good and informed citizenship to personally ascertain and verify the shit-stream of what we still call information—is to find voices and visions that one finds reliable and useful. To indulge the still-popular fetish for full disclosure (and lists), here’s a list of those to whom I pay attention:
- Frank Rich and Gail Collins in The New York Times
- Tom Engelhardt and his various associates at The Nation Institute
- Robert Scheer at Truthdig.com
- Jon Lee Anderson and Alma Guillermoprieto at The New Yorker
- Christopher Hitchens, variously at The Atlantic and Vanity Fair
- Hendrick Hertzberg at The New Yorker