Two weeks ago, Paul Krugman blasted William Saletan for his adoring love letter to Paul Ryan. Now, Saletan wants his letter back. He was blinded by his (typical) desire to find that mythical beast, the Reasonable Republican—just as Krugman said. And now that Saletan is repudiating his love, Krugman is the first—likely of many—to congratulate him for finally seeing the light. I’m afraid that Krugman may be falling for Saletan himself who claims to be another mythical beast, the Centrist Pundit.

William Saletan claims to be a liberal Republican. I’m somewhat impressed by this. Most such people call themselves centrists. Although I think “liberal Republican” is a misnomer, it has at least some information content. But I can see the problem with this naming thing. Whether Saletan or Friedman or any other Serious Moderate, they must grapple with the fact that they are socially liberal and economically conservative. This is what defines almost all of the Washington pundit class. And it is what allows them to claim that they are centrists or—even more perniciously—independents. They are no such thing. In fact, they are often extremists in both categories.

What most people find annoying about centrist pundits is the arrogance of their supposed objectivity. A quick look at their almost comically stereotyped views within the social and economic areas shows this clearly. Saletan’s social views are typically liberal: pro gay rights; pro abortion rights. I’ll bet he even believes in evolution! But his economic views are typically conservative: pro free trade; vaguely anti-union. Would you believe he’s very concerned about the deficit?!

The reason that Saletan and his peers share this kind of political outlook is clear enough: it speaks to their personal interests. They are socially liberal because the corresponding views improve their lives. They have friends who are gay. They’ve had girlfriends who have had abortions. Their careers depend upon a strong first amendment. So their lives would be poorer and their bank accounts too, if the social conservatives got power in the United States. As a result, they are socially liberal—even extremely so.

On the other side of things, they are rich. Whether on the TV, in newspaper, or increasingly even on the internet, pundits are rich. They are all well inside the top 20% of earners. As a result, Saletan finds it easy to be a booster for so called free trade. No Chinese worker is going to take his job. (Not that there aren’t about a million who could do it as well.) But unionized IT professionals might reduce his income. And increased taxes on the upper class could certainly reduce his income. So it just makes sense to argue that Social Security must be cut while ignoring the obvious fix of increasing the payroll tax cap, which it just so happens would increase his tax burden.

It is no accident that professional moderates like Saletan so often skew socially liberal and economically conservative. It is in their own best interests. And I don’t blame them. But I do blame the system itself, which selects for exactly this kind of thinking. It does it in the name of objectivity or “even handedness.” When accused of liberal bias, they can trot out conservative economic bona fides. When accused of conservative bias (Rarely!) they can trot out their liberal social bona fides. But these pundits are not objective or even handed. They are on the extremes in a very predictable way.

No one has written more about the supposed liberal bias of the mainstream media than Eric Alterman. When it comes to most issues, he shows that such claims are ridiculous; the media are generally moderate to conservative. But Alterman notes in What Liberal Media? the case on social issues is far from clear—reporters tend to skew liberal on these. But whereas reporters have responded to this kind of bias, pundits seem to have been blind to them.

Here is a typical example of Saletan using the social liberal/economic conservative combination to falsely imply his reasonableness:

Although this kind of belief combination is better than that of the modern wackos of conservatism, it is nothing like reasonable. It is self-serving and utterly subjective. We need to stop pretending that it is objective or centrist.

In reference to the wonderful debt graph that Ezra Klein presented yesterday, Dean Baker presents an even better graph. This one is not on debt, because as Baker notes, the issue is not debt; it is interest on the debt. He notes sarcastically, “We don’t get back to the same devastating interest burdens we faced in the early 90s until 2019”:

Ezra Klein has again posted the following federal debt graph on WonkBlog, and I thought it was a good idea to put it up here. It is from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The main thing that it shows is that the Republican obsession over debt and deficits is completely hypocritical. The only part of the debt that is truly unsustainable is the Bush tax cuts. And that is the only thing that the Republicans are committed to keeping.

I watched a little bit of the RNC tonight. I saw parts of the Bob McDonnell and Scott Walker speeches. I know that I’m a partisan, but I still think I call my own side for its bullshit. I rarely see things that are clearly wrong or highly distorted by Democrats. But with these two guys at the RNC, there was almost nothing that wasn’t false or at least deceptive. One of the biggest things was this claim that we have a trillion dollar deficit. Everyone knows that the reason the deficit is so high is that the economy is bad so there is less revenue and more expenditures on safety net programs. But even apart from this larger context, there is the graph above. The biggest part of our deficit woes are due to the Bush tax cuts and this will only become worse as the decade continues.

I’m willing to admit that there are good ideas on what used to be called right of the political spectrum. But these ideas are all part of modern Democratic Party thought. The only thing that the Republicans have to offer are lies. The one consolation is that if the Republicans get in power, their economic policy will be the same as it always was—you know, socialism.

Sarah Silverman did a TED Talk that wasn’t released and it got me thinking. I’ve written before that as good as these talks often are they have a pernicious philosophical basis. In particular, they imply that they are just “telling it like it is.” They claim to be objective.

This in itself is a big problem. It is fine for an individual to think that he is just following where the facts lead. Little delusions do little harm. But when an institution suffers from the same delusion, it can do great harm.

Dirty Jobs

For example, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame gave a talk about how the idea of self actualization was bad. Based upon his experience, people doing grungy manual labor were the most happy. For all I know, this is true. To me, the biggest problem in modern life is finding meaning, and if I were a shepherd, I might well be much happier.

But the rich and famous Mr Rowe hasn’t actually lived with the people who appear on his show. He only sees them while the cameras are around. People tend to be happy when people show a sincere interest in them.

What’s more, there is a selection problem. Unsuccessful farmers don’t show up on Dirty Jobs. For most people, it isn’t a choice between a secure job as a museum curator and a secure job as a farmer. Higher prestige jobs tend to be more secure.

Rich men telling young people that they will be happiest if they forego college and take a menial job are just evil.

TED Talks Elitism

TED Talks are geared toward the elites and what their interests are. Basically, it is a series by, for, and of Michael Bloomberg. And there’s nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is the implication that these talks don’t funnel the truth into a very narrow Overton Window: that occupied by the mainstream media — socially liberal but economically quite conservative.

And the thing is that as much as I care about social issues, economic issues are the ones that most affect people in America today. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was a repugnant policy, but income inequality is destroying our society. DADT harmed a relatively small number of people in the military, but income inequality harms hundreds of millions in this country. DADT could have waited, but income inequality cannot.

Sarah Silverman

I was shocked to hear that Sarah Silverman’s TED Talk was effectively banned. Chris Anderson — that bastion of thoughtcrime policing — called the talk, “God-awful.” Luckily, someone finally leaked the video. And guess what? All she did was a stand-up routine that was completely in character for her:

I’ve more or less come to the conclusion that as much as I might generally agree with certain rich people, they are all pernicious actors. Because of what our society values, these people have too much power. This isn’t the power to explicitly force us to do anything. Instead, it is the power to force their ideas — regardless of how extreme — into the public discussion.

I may agree with Paul Krugman today, but tomorrow, he could say anything. And because of his wealth (and not his arguments), he will be heard. This is a major problem and it is well on display in the over 1000 TED Talks online.

Sarah Silverman by Joan Garvin under CC BY 2.0.