July 16, 2003

The Perils of Punditry

In a world of daily- nay, almost hourly - journalism, where every clever man, every man who thinks himself clever, or whom anybody else thinks clever, is called upon to deliver his judgment point-blank and at the word of command on every conceivable subject of human thought, or on what sometimes seems to him very much the same thing, on every inconceivable display of human want of thought, there is such a spendthrift waste of all those commonplaces which furnish the permitted staple of public discourse that there is little chance of beguiling a new tune out of the one-stringed instrument on which we have been thrumming so long.
From James Russell Lowell's "Democracy" 6 October 1884 Posted by Vanderleun at July 16, 2003 10:25 AM
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