I am haunted by Richard Cohen.
Last week, he wrote a column for the
Washington Post in which he advised a failing 12th grade student named Gabriela that she "would never need to know algebra." Since that time, he has been lambasted in the blogosphere.
Richard, this is Mike: There's life after punditry.
In truth, I don't know what to tell Richard. The blogosphere now requires newspaper columnists and reporters to think a little more carefully about their previously acclaimed scribbling in the face of more critical readers. All it seems to do, though, is ruin the lives of countless middle-aged former guardians of truth and the conventional wisdom. In D.C., more and more pundits are being upstaged by guys and gals in their pajamas. It hardly seems right.
I confess to be one of those people who hate punditry. I can do my basic ivory tower philosophizing all right (although not insider schmoozing) but I flunked logical fallacies (once), barely passed hasty generalizations the second time -- the only proof I've ever seen of divine intervention -- somehow passed wishful thinking and resolved, with a grateful exhale of breath, that I would never go near punditry again. I let others go on to pontificating and sermonizing while I busied myself learning how to do research. In due course, this came to be the way I made my living. Economics 101: Best class I ever took.
Here's the thing, Richard: We don't need pundits anymore. We don't accept their pronouncements as gospel truth and don't anxiously await their output. We don't care to know -- never mind want to know – what they think of the President or what they think we ought to do in Iraq or what the Democrats need to do to recapture Congress -- or something like that. Most of that kind of writing can be done by a
random story generator. On the other hand, no computer can fix a leaky toilet or super-size an order of fries -- or hand a newspaper columnist his morning mail. If, say, the
Post wanted you to do something constructive, like correcting grammar and spelling, I would be on its side. But punditry? Please.
Richard, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that punditry informs the opinions of the American people. This is a lie propagated by, among others, pundits. Problem-solving is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Writing is not. The proof of this, Richard, is all the people in my high school who were whizzes at math but did not know a thing about history and could not write a readable English sentence still went on to develop operating systems for Microsoft. I can cite Sergey, whose last name will not be mentioned, who aced algebra but when called to the board in geography class, located the Sahara Desert right where the Gobi usually is. He was off by a whole continent. A few years later, he created
Google maps so the rest of us could find the Sahara.
Look, Richard, I am not anti-punditry. It has its uses, I suppose, and I think it should be available for people who want to read it. Maybe Americans should even be compelled to read it, but it should not be a requirement for citizenship. There are those of you, and Richard you are one, who know what it is like to stare at a social, political, financial or military problem until you have eyeballed a hole in the page and
not understand a thing you're seeing. There are those of you who know the sweat, the panic, the trembling, cold fear that comes from the editor casting an eye in your direction and calling on you to meet your deadline. It is like being summoned to your own execution.
Almost 20 years ago, you wrote a similar column about algebra. Math teachers struck back with a vengeance. They made so many claims for algebra's intrinsic worth that you felt like a dummy. Once again, you just didn't get it. In the two decades since, you have lived a pretty full life and never, ever used -- or wanted to use -- algebra. You were lucky, though. Others learned algebra and other forms of math and helped create the miracles of the modern world.
Algebra ruined many a day for you. Don't let your punditry ruin Gabriela's life.
