The Atlantic Monthly has put together a list it calls The Atlantic 50, which it describes as "the columnists and bloggers and broadcast pundits who shape the national debates:"
Updated: At a reader's suggestion, I looked up on Google Trends the number of searches for each name on this list. "steve sailer" came in ahead of 19 of The Atlantic 50. For example, #1 ranked "paul krugman" has been searched for 17.6 times as often on Google as "steve sailer" in 2009, but #12 ranked David Broder has only been searched for 0.4 times as often as "steve sailer."
And since "isteve" gets another 50% as many searches as "steve sailer," I might come in ahead of five or six more of these supposedly big names, putting me right at about #25. Of course, the same could be said for lots of other people who aren't on The Atlantic 50. For example, Ann Coulter is searched for more often than anybody on The Atlantic 50 besides Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and Michelle Malkin is ahead of Krugman. (And there are lots of technical quibbles about the spelling of names, last name-only searches, and so forth, so don't take these ratios all that seriously.)
Here's how The Atlantic came up with their list of "the most influential commentators in the nation:"
Rather than debate who is on the list, I'm going to use this list to answer a question I've been wondering about. Like Francis Galton in the 1860s, I like to take other people's lists made for their own purposes and use them to answer my own questions, such as: What are the demographics of opinion-molders?
Using somebody else's list to answer your question is less susceptible to bias than making up your own list. Presumably, the Atlantic folks weren't thinking about demographics when they came up with their methodology, so their list isn't biased by preconceptions about demographic balance. Therefore, whatever its flaws, it's a more neutral starting point for examining the demographics of the commentariat than any list I'd come up with after I came up with my question.
Here's my first crack at estimating the demographics of The Atlantic 50. I'll update this table on Friday as improved info comes in via the Comments.
The first thing that leaps out at you demographically is the Lack of Diversity, the extreme under-representation of Non-Asian Minorities. Out of fifty, there's one black guy, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post (who out of this rather dull list is definitely one of my favorites -- sensible yet idiosyncratic). So, the list is 2% black, whereas the population is about 13% black
As for Hispanics, there's one Spanish-surnamed guy, Matt Yglesias, who has a white Cuban grandfather, but doesn't particularly consider himself Hispanic and instead identifies as Jewish-American, due to his three Jewish grandparents. So, we'll call the list 0.5% Hispanic, versus 15% of the population.
So, although non-Asian minorities are a little over 30% of the population, they are under-represented by an order of magnitude among the opinion elite.
"Asians" (following the Census Bureau's post-1982 definition when they took South Asians -- physical anthropology be damned! -- out of the Caucasian race and put them in with East Asians) are represented by Fareed Zakaria, who is from an aristocratic Indian Muslim background. (His father was #2 to Indira Gandhi in India's ruling Congress Party.) So, 2% Asian on the list versus maybe 5% of the population. By the way, I'm not surprised that the "Asian" representative is Indian rather than from the much more numerous East Asian community. South Asians tend to be more political and loquacious than East Asians.
So, the Atlantic's list is 96% white, which certainly fits my long-held theory that our media elites are clueless about the impact of demographic change in the American population because everybody they compete with is white. For example, a recent study found that 94% of the screenwriters of studio releases are white. At this level in American society, minorities are just exotics. As I wrote in 2006:
The Atlantic 50 is 82% male.
It's 6% out-of-the closet homosexual (Andrew Sullivan, Rachel Maddow, and Glenn Greenwald).
Religious ethnicity (i.e., the religious background of one's ancestors) is interesting. I haven't exhaustively searched each pundit's parents, but I looked enough to find out some things I hadn't known, such as that David Ignatius of the Washington Post is Armenian. Also, the father of Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times was an Armenian immigrant college professor from Romania. (I can't find anything about the background of his college professor mother Jane.)
There's a widespread assumption that any pundit with a German-sounding name is Jewish, although that's not always true. Is Kimberly Strassel Jewish? Steve Benen? I don't know enough to even guess.
Keith Olbermann was raised Unitarian and in this video tells a long story about how his father turned down a job at an anti-Semitic New York department store chain in the 1960s because they kept probing to see if he's Jewish. According to Olberman's version of the story, his father finally shouted that he didn't spend his Saturdays at temple because he wasn't Jewish and stormed out denouncing the department store executives for their anti-Semitism. And that's when the 10-year-old Olbermann learned to hate conservatives.
Perhaps, though, I wonder if young Olbermann didn't get the story backwards in some fashion. The notion of an anti-Semitic department store chain in New York City in the 1960s seems curious. Was there one? My search of Google for the phrase "anti-Semitic department store" finds zero hits. My experience at the UCLA MBA school in the early 1980s was that a professor had to warn the gentile female students that, much as they might be experts on fashion and shopping, they should not get their hopes up about making a great career at any of LA's department store chains because the best jobs were reserved for Jewish men.
Perhaps, the elder Mr. Olbermann was angry at the anti-gentilism of the department store executives, but since "anti-gentilism" isn't even a word, the story got stuck backwards in Olbermann the younger's head. Or maybe the elder Mr. Olbermann was part Jewish and didn't feel like apologizing for his ancestors' mixed marriages to the Jewish department store executives. Who knows?
Olbermann was raised in the Unitarian church, so I'll put him down as Protestant. (Yes, I know that Unitarians aren't even Christians theologically, but ethnically they are more or less Protestants.)
Skipping Strassel, Benen, and Kristof's mom, I'll take a guess at the religious background of 47.5 of the pundits and use 47.5 as my denominator.
Roman Catholics do fairly well, with 23 percent, plus another 3 percent Armenian Catholics (are Armenians Catholics? They aren't Protestants), plus 2 percent Eastern Orthodox (Arianna Huffington). Protestants are underrepresented at 20%. Jews make up about 50% of the Atlantic 50 versus 3% of the population, which means people of Jewish background are a little more than 30 times more likely to be in the Atlantic 50 as the average American. White Jewish men are at least 50 times over-represented.
The Jewish figure may go down a little as I hear about more individuals with Jewish surnames who are actually half-Jewish. And there are all the questions about what to do with adoptees, cuckoos' eggs, converts, and so forth.
This strong Jewish representation among the influential isn't new. In the 1995 book Jews and the New American Scene, the prominent social scientist Seymour Martin Lipset, a Senior Scholar of the Wilstein Institute for Jewish Policy Studies, and Earl Raab, Director of the Perlmutter Institute for Jewish Advocacy at Brandeis University, pointed out:
Updated: At a reader's suggestion, I looked up on Google Trends the number of searches for each name on this list. "steve sailer" came in ahead of 19 of The Atlantic 50. For example, #1 ranked "paul krugman" has been searched for 17.6 times as often on Google as "steve sailer" in 2009, but #12 ranked David Broder has only been searched for 0.4 times as often as "steve sailer."
And since "isteve" gets another 50% as many searches as "steve sailer," I might come in ahead of five or six more of these supposedly big names, putting me right at about #25. Of course, the same could be said for lots of other people who aren't on The Atlantic 50. For example, Ann Coulter is searched for more often than anybody on The Atlantic 50 besides Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and Michelle Malkin is ahead of Krugman. (And there are lots of technical quibbles about the spelling of names, last name-only searches, and so forth, so don't take these ratios all that seriously.)
Here's how The Atlantic came up with their list of "the most influential commentators in the nation:"
To compile the list, our team spent months collecting and analyzing data, tracking a group of 400 names that eventually became our 50. Our in-house methodology relies on three streams of information:
- Influence: We conducted surveys of more than 250 insiders – members of Congress, national media figures, and political players – asking respondents to rank-order the commentators who most influence their own thinking. These surveys were done with National Journal.
- Reach: We collected and analyzed data to measure the total audience of each commentator.
The final list is the result of an algorithm that brings together these three factors.
- Web Engagement: In partnership with PostRank, a company specializing in filtering social media data, the Wire analyzed top commentators on 16 measures of webiness, including mentions on Twitter and performance on popular social media sites like Digg and Delicious.
Rather than debate who is on the list, I'm going to use this list to answer a question I've been wondering about. Like Francis Galton in the 1860s, I like to take other people's lists made for their own purposes and use them to answer my own questions, such as: What are the demographics of opinion-molders?
Using somebody else's list to answer your question is less susceptible to bias than making up your own list. Presumably, the Atlantic folks weren't thinking about demographics when they came up with their methodology, so their list isn't biased by preconceptions about demographic balance. Therefore, whatever its flaws, it's a more neutral starting point for examining the demographics of the commentariat than any list I'd come up with after I came up with my question.
Here's my first crack at estimating the demographics of The Atlantic 50. I'll update this table on Friday as improved info comes in via the Comments.
| Male | White | Black | Asian | Hisp | Jewish | RC | Arm | Ort | Pro | Mus | |
| 41.00 | 48.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 0.25 | 23.75 | 10.75 | 1.50 | 1.00 | 9.50 | 1.00 | |
| 82% | 96% | 2% | 2% | 1% | 50% | 23% | 3% | 2% | 20% | 2% | |
| Paul Krugman | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Rush Limbaugh | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| George Will | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Thomas Friedman | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| David Brooks | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Charles Krauthammer | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Glenn Beck | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Frank Rich | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Andrew Sullivan | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Karl Rove | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Sean Hannity | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| David Broder | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Peggy Noonan | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Rachel Maddow | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Arianna Huffington | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Fareed Zakaria | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Maureen Dowd | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| E.J. Dionne | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Bill O'Reilly | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Keith Olbermann | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Kathleen Parker | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Glenn Greenwald | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Nicholas Kristof | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | ||||||||
| William Kristol | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Robert Samuelson | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Dick Morris | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Eugene Robinson | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| David Ignatius | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Josh Marshall | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Mark Levin | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Holman Jenkins | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Bill Moyers | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Richard Cohen | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Jonah Goldberg | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | 0.5 | |||||||
| Gail Collins | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Ruth Marcus | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Steven Pearlstein | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Joe Klein | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Anne Applebaum | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Michael Kinsley | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Matthew Yglesias | 1 | 1 | 0.25 | 0.75 | 0.25 | ||||||
| Joe Nocera | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Ronald Brownstein | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Steve Benen | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Lou Dobbs | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Bret Stephens | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Kimberley Strassel | 1 | ||||||||||
| Harold Meyerson | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Ezra Klein | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Hendrik Hertzberg | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | 0.5 |
The first thing that leaps out at you demographically is the Lack of Diversity, the extreme under-representation of Non-Asian Minorities. Out of fifty, there's one black guy, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post (who out of this rather dull list is definitely one of my favorites -- sensible yet idiosyncratic). So, the list is 2% black, whereas the population is about 13% black
As for Hispanics, there's one Spanish-surnamed guy, Matt Yglesias, who has a white Cuban grandfather, but doesn't particularly consider himself Hispanic and instead identifies as Jewish-American, due to his three Jewish grandparents. So, we'll call the list 0.5% Hispanic, versus 15% of the population.
So, although non-Asian minorities are a little over 30% of the population, they are under-represented by an order of magnitude among the opinion elite.
"Asians" (following the Census Bureau's post-1982 definition when they took South Asians -- physical anthropology be damned! -- out of the Caucasian race and put them in with East Asians) are represented by Fareed Zakaria, who is from an aristocratic Indian Muslim background. (His father was #2 to Indira Gandhi in India's ruling Congress Party.) So, 2% Asian on the list versus maybe 5% of the population. By the way, I'm not surprised that the "Asian" representative is Indian rather than from the much more numerous East Asian community. South Asians tend to be more political and loquacious than East Asians.
So, the Atlantic's list is 96% white, which certainly fits my long-held theory that our media elites are clueless about the impact of demographic change in the American population because everybody they compete with is white. For example, a recent study found that 94% of the screenwriters of studio releases are white. At this level in American society, minorities are just exotics. As I wrote in 2006:
This doesn’t mean that the white elites view minorities as their equals. Far from it. Instead, they can’t conceive of them as competition. Nobody from Chiapas is going to take my job. Status competition in the upper reaches of American life still largely consists of whites trying to claw their way to the top over other whites, who, as an example, make up 99 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs. That’s why the media treats the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of white-collar jobs to English-speaking, high-IQ Indians as a respectable cause for alarm, but not the insourcing of tens of millions of immigrants to perform blue-collar and servile jobs.
The Atlantic 50 is 82% male.
It's 6% out-of-the closet homosexual (Andrew Sullivan, Rachel Maddow, and Glenn Greenwald).
Religious ethnicity (i.e., the religious background of one's ancestors) is interesting. I haven't exhaustively searched each pundit's parents, but I looked enough to find out some things I hadn't known, such as that David Ignatius of the Washington Post is Armenian. Also, the father of Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times was an Armenian immigrant college professor from Romania. (I can't find anything about the background of his college professor mother Jane.)
There's a widespread assumption that any pundit with a German-sounding name is Jewish, although that's not always true. Is Kimberly Strassel Jewish? Steve Benen? I don't know enough to even guess.
Keith Olbermann was raised Unitarian and in this video tells a long story about how his father turned down a job at an anti-Semitic New York department store chain in the 1960s because they kept probing to see if he's Jewish. According to Olberman's version of the story, his father finally shouted that he didn't spend his Saturdays at temple because he wasn't Jewish and stormed out denouncing the department store executives for their anti-Semitism. And that's when the 10-year-old Olbermann learned to hate conservatives.
Perhaps, though, I wonder if young Olbermann didn't get the story backwards in some fashion. The notion of an anti-Semitic department store chain in New York City in the 1960s seems curious. Was there one? My search of Google for the phrase "anti-Semitic department store" finds zero hits. My experience at the UCLA MBA school in the early 1980s was that a professor had to warn the gentile female students that, much as they might be experts on fashion and shopping, they should not get their hopes up about making a great career at any of LA's department store chains because the best jobs were reserved for Jewish men.
Perhaps, the elder Mr. Olbermann was angry at the anti-gentilism of the department store executives, but since "anti-gentilism" isn't even a word, the story got stuck backwards in Olbermann the younger's head. Or maybe the elder Mr. Olbermann was part Jewish and didn't feel like apologizing for his ancestors' mixed marriages to the Jewish department store executives. Who knows?
Olbermann was raised in the Unitarian church, so I'll put him down as Protestant. (Yes, I know that Unitarians aren't even Christians theologically, but ethnically they are more or less Protestants.)
Skipping Strassel, Benen, and Kristof's mom, I'll take a guess at the religious background of 47.5 of the pundits and use 47.5 as my denominator.
Roman Catholics do fairly well, with 23 percent, plus another 3 percent Armenian Catholics (are Armenians Catholics? They aren't Protestants), plus 2 percent Eastern Orthodox (Arianna Huffington). Protestants are underrepresented at 20%. Jews make up about 50% of the Atlantic 50 versus 3% of the population, which means people of Jewish background are a little more than 30 times more likely to be in the Atlantic 50 as the average American. White Jewish men are at least 50 times over-represented.
The Jewish figure may go down a little as I hear about more individuals with Jewish surnames who are actually half-Jewish. And there are all the questions about what to do with adoptees, cuckoos' eggs, converts, and so forth.
This strong Jewish representation among the influential isn't new. In the 1995 book Jews and the New American Scene, the prominent social scientist Seymour Martin Lipset, a Senior Scholar of the Wilstein Institute for Jewish Policy Studies, and Earl Raab, Director of the Perlmutter Institute for Jewish Advocacy at Brandeis University, pointed out:
"During the last three decades, Jews have made up 50% of the top two hundred intellectuals, 40 percent of American Nobel Prize Winners in science and economics, 20 percent of professors at the leading universities, 21 percent of high level civil servants, 40 percent of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington, 26% of the reporters, editors, and executives of the major print and broadcast media, 59 percent of the directors, writers, and producers of the fifty top-grossing motion pictures from 1965 to 1982, and 58 percent of directors, writers, and producers in two or more primetime television series." [pp 26-27]
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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123 comments:
I don't know how you can take a list like this seriously, as it doesn't include Michelle Malkin, Thomas Sowell, and Ann Coulter, but does include Kathleen Parker.
Yes, I skew to the right, but I'm sure there are some lefty equivalents out there.
I know the stated purpose of this post was not to criticize the list, but am I the only one surprised that Pat Buchanan is not on it? I guess it has something to with his webiness.
ezra klein's father is from the brazilian jewish community.
It's 4% out-of-the closet homosexual (Andrew Sullivan, Rachel Maddow).
Was hoping for a little lipstick-lesbian action, but it's a man, baby!!!
Well, many of the Jews on that list got on it by being Jews and not because they posses such finely honed minds. The political punditry game is shockingly prone to cronyism and nepotism.
Take Jonah Goldberg as a example. I'm not picking on him in particular, but he owes what influence he has to being who he is.
Likewise with Erza Klein. Was he really handed the plum positions he currently occupies based on his top-notch writing skills and fresh new insights into socio-economic-political affairs?
Lucianne Goldberg is Episcopalian. I think you've got Jonah Goldberg as half-Catholic. Karl Rove is an atheist, but I understand. I don't see the point of scoring Matt Yglesias, or others, as less that fully Jewish. That's how they self-identify.
Glenn Greenwald is a homosexual. He seldomly writes on immigration because his partner is an immigrant from South America, and so GG considers himself... compromised on that issue.
Just as a caveat, Unitarians transitioned away from Christianity in the 19th century, and by the mid-20th stopped being Christian altogether. Before then, however, Unitarians were as strongly Christian as any other denomination as far as I can tell. Servetus was burned for believing Christ to be subordinate to the Father, but still pre-existed the world as the Logos and gave rise to everything. By the mid-19th century, they started to deny Christ's divinity altogether, and now it's just as common to hear about the Rape of Lucretia as a Hebrew tale in their churches.
By Christian, I mean only that they self-identify as such. By my definition, an Orthodox Christian believes in the Trinity, and that Christ was in some measure divine and human, whereas a Christian is one who identifies as such. So a Mormon would be Christian, but not Orthodox.
"South Asians tend to be much more politicized and voluble than East Asians."
We think of northeast Asians as not being as naturally verbal or literary as Caucasians, yet in the past the civil servants who administered China were all literary men. The civil service exams that selected them were all about philosophy, textual analysis and the writing of essays.
Imperial Chinese culture thought so highly of literary pursuits that it pushed literary men into the highest jobs.
Perhaps the verbal talents possessed by East Asians simply don't translate into European languages well. What if those talents specifically evolved to fit the structures of East Asian languages and vice versa?
Most Indians speak Indo-European languages, which, as the name suggests, descend from the same common ancestor as most modern European languages, including English.
Glenn Beck is Mormon, not Catholic.
Rachel Maddow was rasied Catholic?? Wouldn't have guessed it.
Meanwhile, most of the important commentators who have actually moved understanding of politics and culture are not on the list. Ed Driscoll, Roissy (whatever you think of him, he's certainly changed the discussion), Instapundit, Richard Fernandez (Belmont Club), Roger Simon, Mencius Moldbug, "Spengler," and of course Steve. Mark Steyn, Gateway Pundit, Fjordman, Paul Belien, Gates of Vienna, and Jim Geraghty are missing as well, and they get probably more readers than many of the mainstream pundits.
Its clear a lot of folks are reading Steve and Roissy, in particular, and being influenced by their ideas.
"Glenn Beck is Mormon, not Catholic."
Steve said in the post that he was looking at the religion of these people's parents.
As I read the list I'm struck by how little I think of our nation's leading opinion makers. I respect George Will's opinions and I think Dick Morris has an excellent grasp of political reality. Outside of those two, everyone on the list has their head up their ass.
"Lucianne Goldberg is Episcopalian."
An Episcopalian who was born Lucianne Steinberger.
Anonymous:
Glenn Beck didn't join the LDS Church until 1999. He was raised a Roman Catholic. Steve's list specifically tabulates the religious backgrounds of each pundit's ancestors, not those of the pundits themselves.
By the way, Rush has recently said on his show that his grandfather and namesake was a lifelong Methodist. I think it's pretty safe to presume that his background is Protestant.
"South Asians tend to be much more politicized and voluble than East Asians."
There were many South Asians at my high school but I never noticed above average verbal talent. They all seemed like they were going to go to engineering school.
plus another 3 percent Armenian Catholics
Catholics? Are you sure? Armenia's national Apostolic Church is Oriental Orthodox, which according to Wikipedia is not even Eastern Orthodox, because Oriental Orthodox "churches are generally not in communion with Eastern Orthodox Churches with whom they are in dialogue for a return to unity". There's an Armenian Catholic church, too, which accepts the authority of the Vatican, but it's much smaller than the Armenian Apostolic Church.
It's not fair to say screenwriters and journalists don't have to compete with immigrants. There are plenty of British and Canadian people hopping around in those industries, who may be white but are subject to the same loose or tight visa rules as everyone else.
Jewish 23.75 50%
Komment Kontrol will never allow me to say this, but there's an element of self-fulfilling prophecy here - something along the lines of, "We write 50% of the commentary in this nation if and only if we declare that we write 50% of the commentary in this nation."
Or maybe more like: "You are allowed to claim the other 50% of the commentary in this country if and only if we choose not to contest the claim."
I just noticed the other day that you get the very same thing over at Wikipedia when you read a Bacharim biography versus a Shkotzim biography - for instance, compare the Wikipedia propaganda on Tarski [greatest thing since sliced bread; second coming of the Messiah] -vs- Church [hayseed hick redneck inbred troglodyte].
PS: For all intents and purposes, I don't read ANY of the people on that Atlantic Monthly list.
"Meanwhile, most of the important commentators who have actually moved understanding of politics and culture are not on the list. Ed Driscoll, Roissy (whatever you think of him, he's certainly changed the discussion)"
WTF? You do understand that there's a world out there outside the HBDsphere, don't you?
"You do understand that there's a world out there outside the HBDsphere, don't you?"
Yeah, but it's so boring...
The 20 percent Protestant representation is not surprising and fits into the general late Roman Empire vibe the country has today. There have never been fewer Protestants on the Supreme Court or in Congress than there are today. And look at the demographics of Obama's cabinet to really see the power shift: half-foreign; immigrants; children or grandchildren of immigrants. Catholic and Jewish by and large with perhaps two or three Protestants. You know you're in trouble when Hilary Clinton is the best example one has of the old Protestant America. Obama's maternal roots are deeply American but we all know what he thinks of his white heritage...he hates it.
But does the passing away of Protestant America matter? We'll see.
Armenians are generally orthodox.
As for Ezra Klein, he got his current gig because he built up a following and traffic as a blogger. That's almost purely a result of merit, luck, and timing (i.e., starting early). Same is true for Yglesias. The same would be true of Steve if he wasn't so politically incorrect. Otherwise, someone with Steve's readership could probably leverage his blog into a mainstream pundit gig.
At least three disabled people on the list: Charles Krauthammer (paralyzed), Rush Limbaugh (deaf), and Andrew Sullivan (HIV+).
Peter
One way to be a well-regarded pundit:
Don't have any kids, whether you're straight or gay.
From Huffington to Limbaugh and more, (by my estimate at least a fifth) this works out quite well.
Yeah, but it's so boring...
My childhood was so blissfully naive - having been raised on all sorts of hopelessly optimistic universalisms in the very best Anglo-Celtic tradition ["We hold these truths to be self-evident, blah blah blah"].
But since I've started to learn about ethnic historicism & grievance-mongering & darwinistic racketeering, I'm getting to be so damned cynical that I can barely bring myself to shake hands with anyone anymore [much less try to carry on conversations with them].
Although I tell you what - if you seed a conversation with the right key words and catch phrases and communicational cues, and if you just sit back and listen and let them do the talking, then it's simply amazing the things that you can hear people say.
“Yes, I know that Unitarians aren't even Christians theologically, but ethnically they are more or less Protestants.”
Not really. Unitarianism is often a solution for people who come from mixed religious backgrounds. (E.g., my grandfather’s sister was raised a Baptist and her husband a Quaker. They chose Unitarianism as a compromise. I also know several mixed Christian-Jewish marriages which settled on Unitarianism and several eccentric Jews who converted to Unitarianism. Many Unitarians have at least some Jewish background. (Also note that Unitarians have the highest average SAT scores of any US religious group –Avg. 1206).
“Are Armenians Catholics?”
A small minority of them are (the Ottoman Sultan allowed Catholic/French missionaries to proselytize his Christian (but not Muslim) subjects in the 18th century in return for French military aid), but the overwhelming majority are Oriental Orthodox.
This survey of "the columnists and bloggers and broadcast pundits who shape the national debates" is flawed.
“We conducted surveys … asking respondents to rank-order the commentators who most influence their own thinking.”
And perhaps the respondents nominated commentators who are “respectable”.
They may – and should – all read Steve S et al but they just won’t own up to this.
Yeah, but it's so boring...
My childhood was so blissfully naive - having been raised on all sorts of hopelessly optimistic universalisms in the very best Anglo-Celtic tradition ["We hold these truths to be self-evident, blah blah blah"].
But since I've started to learn about ethnic historicism & grievance-mongering & darwinistic racketeering, I'm getting to be so damned cynical that I can barely bring myself to shake hands with anyone anymore [much less try to carry on conversations with them].
Although I tell you what - if you seed a conversation with the right key words and catch phrases and communicational cues, and if you just sit back and listen and let them do the talking, then it's simply amazing the things that you can hear people say.
perfect comment- I couldn't agree more- ignorance really is bliss- my parents are still so happy- the internet is making people miserable
thanks a lot Steve
Dan in DC
Obviously, many of these pundits are not self-made. Some of them(like William Cristol) had a family connection that helped them rise up. At least a few others had similar connections, or through cronyism or connections with very powerful think tanks and politicians.
It would be interesting to estimate just how many rose up through nepotism/cronyism. It would also be interesting to give a rough IQ estimate of each pundit, and see if it correlates with influence. IQ can be estimated(very roughly) by their educational attainment, SAT score(if available), awards they've won, various miscellaneous achievements indicative of high intelligence, as well as their writing style.
How well is Sailer (and the larger Steveosphere which I humbly consider myself a part of) known to the mainstream? I'm very curious about this.
Can anyone quantify this and provide a baseline to compare it to?
I wonder how many of them have been addicted to drugs or alcohol(legal and illegal), besides Beck and Limbaugh. And how would this compare with the national average?
Also, are any of them mentally ill, even if only mildly?
An interesting measure would be how many of these people came to prominence via the net/blogs, rather than via the MSM.
The Atlantic article said they started with 400 commentators and winnowed it down to the top 50. I wish they would print the standings for the entire list. I am curious as to whether HBD types are even on their radar
Onestdv,
sure i can.
You can compare searches for "Steve Sailer" with searches for the pundits on the list using google trends. If we ignore the fact that some of the names are more difficult to spell and hence would be searched for less, the first person who Steve Sailer beats on the list for the past year is David Broder:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=steve+sailer%2C+david+broder&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2009&sort=0
Charles Krauthammer beats Steve 7:1. Paul Krugman beats Steve 1:.06. However, Steve beats many of the people at the bottom of the list. He wins against Kimberly Strassel 25:1.
Overall, Steve is doing alright and his search rating shows a slight positive.
"Although I tell you what - if you seed a conversation with the right key words and catch phrases and communicational cues, and if you just sit back and listen and let them do the talking, then it's simply amazing the things that you can hear people say."
That's for sure. People know what they're allowed to say and what's taboo. As long as you look a little glum when you say anything bad about ethnic diversity (darn pesky nuture) you usually get knowing nods in return.
Also, (ignoring the difficulty of name spelling) Michelle Malkin should have been on this list. Among the top 20, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Karl Rove beat her while Andrew Sullivan and George Will both tied her.
So for top 20:
Michelle is 14-2-4.
Underachiever
I just noticed the other day that you get the very same thing over at Wikipedia when you read a Bacharim biography versus a Shkotzim biography - for instance, compare the Wikipedia propaganda on Tarski [greatest thing since sliced bread; second coming of the Messiah] -vs- Church [hayseed hick redneck inbred troglodyte].
I almost feel like some kind of wacko nut job just saying this, but there's actually quite a bit more to this.
Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com, has been running a blog called Deep Capture documenting certain issues related to Wikipedia propaganda.
See the following:
"Abuse of Social Media by Stock Manipulators"
"Wikipedia"
"The Hijacking of Social Media"
"Likewise with Erza Klein. Was he really handed the plum positions he currently occupies based on his top-notch writing skills and fresh new insights into socio-economic-political affairs?"
Yes. I agree with you about Goldberg, he's dim, but Klein is smart and he actually understands economics. Him and Yglesias are not like the rest of the leftist bloggers, they are young and actually know what they are talking about unlike "Kos", Jane Hamsher, Oliver Willis, etc. Klein and Yglesias were well recognized on the web before they got their MSM positions so I don't think they got their jobs because they are Jewish.
Dear Underachiever:
Thanks. Very interesting.
By the way, in Google searches, #1 ranked "Paul Krugman" is crushed by "Roissy" 2.56 to 1.
Steve said:
So, the Atlantic's list is 96% white, which certainly fits my long-held theory that our media elites are clueless about the impact of demographic change in the American population because everybody they compete with is white. For example, a recent study found that 94% of the screenwriters of studio releases are white.
On KCBS this evening Gene Burns interviewed San Jose Mercury News journalist Mike Cassedy regarding American newspapers evaporating revenues and readership.
Old news. I gave up my local news subscription years before my online reading began for the simple reason newspaper editors disliked my opinions and ideas.
The fact that journalists like Mr Cassedy and SF Gate's Jon Carroll take comfort in their view the vast majority of their readers are dense, law obsessed, xenophobes, and penny-pinching misers. While many columns inches *must* be written about Americas Future, the insignificant percentage of NAM reader. After all, most possess authentic street cred and dislike laws in general and particular.
So, to their minds, its true, that the job of their newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict ... their readership?
Newspaper marketing and ad sales disconnection from editorial policy regarding who consumes their product takes the form of Those-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. (In our Bay Area, its mostly Caucasian and some Asian) Why the secrecy? Well... whites are simply civilization's antagonists and Asians our likely future villains.
"I just noticed the other day that you get the very same thing over at Wikipedia when you read a Bacharim biography versus a Shkotzim biography - for instance, compare the Wikipedia propaganda on Tarski [greatest thing since sliced bread; second coming of the Messiah] -vs- Church [hayseed hick redneck inbred troglodyte]."
WTF. I just read both entries and Church's entry doesn't denigrate him at all. Tarski's may be a little overblown but you cannot deny that the man was important.
"PS: For all intents and purposes, I don't read ANY of the people on that Atlantic Monthly list."
Jews. They're gonna getcha.
"By the way, in Google searches, #1 ranked "Paul Krugman" is crushed by "Roissy" 2.56 to 1."
To be fair, "Roissy" is also the name of the main airport in France. If you started a blog called "Dulles in DC", your Google search numbers would probably look pretty good too.
"Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com, has been running a blog called Deep Capture documenting certain issues related to Wikipedia propaganda.
See the following:
"Abuse of Social Media by Stock Manipulators""
Patrick Byrne has been whining about investors short-selling his company's stock for years, without ever acknowledging that the reason they are shorting it is it's a crappy company. Just look at the numbers. Negative book value per share, negative ROA, etc. If anything, it's a wonder why his company's stock is as high as it is. If he wants to crush the shorts, all he has to do is have his company start generating some consistent and growing profits. Maybe if he spent less time blogging, he'd have more time to figure out how to run his business properly.
if you guys are done whispering about the unspeakably powerful jewish/catholic cabal, (you guys DO realize how laughable and pathetic you sound, right? ever'thang would be all better if only hymie wasn't keepin' you down??)(i'll BETCHA the vatican invented the AIDS virus, too! it's clearly all part of a sinister centuries-in-the-making rothschild/opus dei plot for world domination! my god! this thing is huge! HUGE, i tell you!) maybe someone can answer this for a pore dumb redneck. krugman is number 1?!?
the bulk of krugman's BS, i assume, is trotted out in the form of his sleep-inducing NY times obama cheerleader missives disguised as econ chat. since it's labeled as econ chat, that's gonna turn off 90% of all right off the bat. the only people who read economists are other economists, as the rest of us have figured out they're just guessing and have no more credibility in re the future than does madame zora, seer of mysteries. the times has a circulation of a million, plus or minus, so that's (maybe) 100,000 people who (theoretically) read his crap once or twice a week. it's understood his jive is all political, so there can't be that many of those 100K that take him seriously. "ho-hum. krugman and modo blaming the weather on bush again."
limbaugh has 20,000,000 or so folks listen to him for up to 15 hours a week. beck has 10 or 12 mil. hannitty, o'reilly, levin, even huffington and olbermann reach and influence more people in a day than krugman does in a month. ann coulter, mark steyn, and jon stewart - love 'em or hate 'em - *don't even make the list*?? please.
this is why the old media is dying. even when they *try* to be serious and relatively bias-free, all they end up proving is they're a pack of morons.
One day Alonzo Church closed his eyes, and when he opened them back up again, the entire discipline of computer science had been invented right out of thin air.
Everything you are doing at your keyboard right now owes its existence [or at least its implementation] to Alonzo Church.
Steve, this post proves what a pro you are. Rather than denouncing the people on the list, which is probably what most of the people ON the list would have done, you use it for another eye-opener. I think you should be at the top of the list, but of course we all know these lists have a political background so that precludes the iSteve's.
...Nobel Prize Winners in science and economics...
I love how they lump Science and Economics together, when everybody knows that economics is not a hard science but in reality a political science. And guess who owns that?
Whiskey sez:
Its clear a lot of folks are reading Steve and Roissy, in particular, and being influenced by their ideas.
Dunno the Roissy guy since his web pops up as "sexual/explicit" on my work computer, and I find it primitive scheming to get into girls' pants. But I agree about Steve. I'd love to see Steve's web LogFiles.
I just noticed the other day that you get the very same thing over at Wikipedia when you read a Bacharim biography versus a Shkotzim biography -
Yeah, that's why I only read straight science or tech articles on Wikipedia. Anything to do with social issues, religion or politics is just hideously biased. Who runs Wikipedia anyway?
"To be fair, "Roissy" is also the name of the main airport in France."
Right.
If you restrict it to just searches in the U.S., "roissy" gets 0.68 times as many searches as "sailer," but "sailer" includes Toni Sailer who just died and various other people. "roissy" gets 2.9 times as many as "steve sailer," but some of those are likely for the airport, the de Sade book, etc.
In any case, the number of searches for roissy in the US has close to doubled over the course of 2009.
Roissy loses about a third of his hits if you search for "roissy -airport -aeroport". The remainder undoubtedly includes a fair number of hits referencing the chateau in The Story of O and the various towns called Roissy. I'm sure there are a few guys besides our neo-Keynesian friend Paul Krugman captured by a search on his name, but it's nothing like boost Roissy gets from Paris and perverts.
Rachel Maddow denies that she's Jewish and says her upbringing was Catholic. But I bet she has Ashkanazi heritage. She says her father has a "Russian" background.
I agree with you about Goldberg, he's dim, but Klein is smart and he actually understands economics. Him and Yglesias are not like the rest of the leftist bloggers, they are young and actually know what they are talking about unlike "Kos", Jane Hamsher, Oliver Willis, etc.
If Klein deserves a spot with the national media then I can think of plenty of other people who do as well, starting with a certain Mr Sailer.
And, not to be provocative, but if Klein understands economics what is he doing on the left?
As for Ezra Klein, he got his current gig because he built up a following and traffic as a blogger.
I can think of a great many bloggers with a following and traffic who have not and never will get a gig with the MSM out of it.
Sailer sez:
In any case, the number of searches for roissy in the US has close to doubled over the course of 2009.
Coz of all the perv t99's who wanna get into chick's pants.
1. Paul Krugman Lunatic/Demagogue
2. Rush Limbaugh Demagogue
3. George Will
4. Thomas Friedman Trite
5. David Brooks Trite
6. Charles Krauthammer
7. Glenn Beck Demagogue/Moron
8. Frank Rich Moron
9. Andrew Sullivan Lunatic
10. Karl Rove Cynical/Trite
11. Sean Hannity Trite
12. David Broder Dull
13. Peggy Noonan
14. Rachel Maddow Who?
15. Arianna Huffington Mron/Trite
16. Fareed Zakaria
17. Maureen Dowd Moron/Trite
18. E.J. Dionne Moron
19. Bill O'Reilly Trite
20. Keith Olbermann Demagogue/Moron
At least three disabled people on the list: Charles Krauthammer (paralyzed), Rush Limbaugh (deaf), and Andrew Sullivan (HIV+).
Add: Thomas Friedman (retarded).
T99 - mentions Belmont Club, I used to find myself drawn into that but I think its just well written Neo-connery. So it could be influential but only through presentation, not the quality of thought.
I think the "Steve Sailer index" comparing these names to Steve's on search-frequency is a brilliant way of drawing out the bias of the Atlantic list compilers and/or their interviewees. Many of those people on the list are nonentities outside the commentariat's own bubble, and their zero ratings on search comparison really demonstrates that.
I love how they lump Science and Economics together, when everybody knows that economics is not a hard science but in reality a political science. And guess who owns that?
They might just as well throw in the peace prize too. That would be too obvious I suppose.
I give no credence to anything other than the proper science Nobels (and Fields medalists). The rest of it is political. Though I dont doubt they are some 'political' elements to the proper prizes as well.
There is certainly one takeaway lesson here for anyone thinking of going into the influential-public-thinker-business.
Pick a name that doesn't sound like anyone/anything else and isnt spelled the same as anyone/anything else.
Oh, and is very easy to spell.
Im British so many of these members of the punditocracy have zero name recognition for me, they are American punditocrats not global.
Of the rest I dont rate any of them compared to our Steve. Of those I do look in on from time to time its more with an amused contempt than with any serious expectation of being informed. Other than of being informed of the writers prejudices and hobby horses.
Huffington Post...*shakes head in bewilderment*
I almost feel like some kind of wacko nut job just saying this, but there's actually quite a bit more to this.
I used to feel the same way - that I was paranoid for noticing this stuff - that it had to be my imagination.
Well guess what? JACK CASHILL WAS RIGHT!!! - Bill Ayers really did write "Dreams".
So that, among other things, Obama's mysterious Caucasian girlfriend, whom we discussed here at iSteve 14 months ago, was in fact Ayers's old flame, Diana Oughton, who perished in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion - i.e. our "President" signed off on a fictional autobiography of himself in which his lovers are based on the twisted & perverted memories of a megalomaniacal bisexual rapist who wants to murder 25 million Americans!!!
You like coincidences?
Do you think it's just a coincidence that Bernardine Dohrn's birth name was Ohrnstein?
Do you think it's just a coincidence that the Nell Minow whose father, Newton, worked with Bernardine Dohrn & Michelle LaVaughn Robinson at Sidley-Austin, and whose sister, Martha, was instrumental in getting Barack Hussein Obama Jr admitted to Harvard Law, is precisely the same Nell Minow who was trotted out by the national media to spearhead the campaign against Matt Taibbi?
Being, in turn, the very Matt Taibbi who wrote an expose of the gang of racketeers which coordinated the Obama campaign and torpedoed the McCain campaign and hoodwinked George Bush and shorted its own portfolio of Liar Loans and received tens of billions of dollars stolen from the American taxpayer [and from his progeny and from his progeny's progeny] and emerged from it all as the only viable financial concern on Wall Street and which is now turning those tens of billions of dollars [stolen from the American taxpayer] into record profits in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression?!?
I mean - GOD DAMN IT THIS SHIT IS ENDLESS - I can't even begin to talk about the insanity of it all without running afoul of the 4096 character limit for posts at blogger.com - and I haven't even mentioned Axelrod and the Psychological Warfare Team [Ariely, Thaler, Sunstein, and Kahneman].
From Huffington to Limbaugh and more, (by my estimate at least a fifth) this works out quite well.
Huh? I seem to recall that Huffington has two kids, although given that her then-husband was known to her to be homosexual, their conception had to be via turkey-baster.
"You do understand that there's a world out there outside the HBDsphere, don't you?"
Yeah, but it's so boring...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”
-John Cage
“I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.”
--John Cage
On Rachel Maddow:
An easy explanation for her answer on upbringing: Jewish father, Shiksa wife.
Im British so many of these members of the punditocracy have zero name recognition for me....
It's the same for Americans. There are 10-15 names on that list I've never heard of.
One way to be a well-regarded pundit:
Don't have any kids, whether you're straight or gay.
From Huffington to Limbaugh and more, (by my estimate at least a fifth) this works out quite well.
One might think that would be especially true for the women on the list, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Arianna Huffington and (as noted on iSteve many times) Maureen Dowd are the only two of the nine women who are definitely and permanently childless. Rachel Maddow does not have any children right now but is still young enough to have them. Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker, Ruth Marcus and Anne Applebaum all have children. I can't find out one way or another for Gail Collins and Kimberley Strassel; like Maddow, Strassel is still young enough to have children if she doesn't already.
Peter
Brostein at the atlantic says goldfarb and rothstein, along with some others, are the most influential pundits....
really, is anyone surprised?
"We think of northeast Asians as not being as naturally verbal or literary as Caucasians, yet in the past the civil servants who administered China were all literary men."
Yeah, of course Rome was the center of the earth at that time also.
Armenian Catholicism is just a religion. Its followers are not necessarily Armenian any more than RCC members are Romans. Well, that's probably an exaggeration. Anyway, the point is, Armenian Catholics in the US could be Ukrainian or Lebanese or what have you for a few generations back, which may well cause them to identify as other than Armenian in national origin.
No one outside the beltway of any political persuasion listens to David Broder or Richard Cohen. The presence of life-serving hacks like them on the list is a testament to how ossified and insular the political culture in DC has gotten. The USA should abandon the idea of a permanent capital city - we should probably let each state capital take a turn every 6 months or something.
Of those I do look in on from time to time its more with an amused contempt than with any serious expectation of being informed.
Yes. The Atlantic's process is only semi-transparent, so there's some doubt, but G**gle searches eliminate it; they're a notoriety test, not an influence test. When I check in with the MSM I'm checking in to see what they're saying and unlikely to buy much of their spin; when leftists check in with Steve they're checking in to see what the racist is saying and unlikely to buy much of his thinking.
If you started a blog called "Dulles in DC", your Google search numbers would probably look pretty good too.
ROTFLMAO!
I Can't say I'm surprised at the HBD validation of this list -- dominated by men, Jews, Whites, etc., etc. All that stuff is predictable.
I do have to say I'm disappointed that there are so many demagogues, neocons, liberals and even some feminists on this list. These people and their ideas have long been discredited by science, common sense and reality (and in the case of neocons: human morality).
It could be that even though The Atlantic is a magazine for middle class Americans -- people who are actually informed and read the news -- they've asked all sorts of Americans, thus also people who don't read and are hardly informed about anything.
Non-informed people would certainly name names like Krugman, Chomsky and Limbaugh. Those are the names they've heard about somewhere (famous talking heads), so they'll guess they must be smart -- otherwise, their fame wouldn't make sense. (Which would indeed be a good question: why are Krugman, Limbaugh and Chomsky famous?)
The list puts Thomas Friedman at #4. Doesn't that say it all?
A much more accurate name is "The top fifty propagandists of the New York Times world view with some right wing demagogues thrown in just to make them look silly" list.
Kimberly Strassel is Jewish. Anne Applebaum is not. I have read an article by her that said she was Episcopalian and celebrates Christmas. Joshua Micah Marshall is not Jewish.
Other than of being informed of the writers prejudices and hobby horses.
Yes. When I read the MSM, it's to find out what the MSM is saying, at least as opinion goes. I do place a modicum of trust in MSM reports of fact (something exploded, someone died, court was in session, etc.).
It's like watching advertising; I believe the Big Mac is on sale, but the part about it being worth eating? No.
Diana Oughton
Heh, this stuff writes itself. Her name is practically Scottish for "dinna oughta" got hooked up with Ayers.
"If Klein deserves a spot with the national media then I can think of plenty of other people who do as well, starting with a certain Mr Sailer."
Agreed but we all know why that won't happen. Sailer could get the same amount of hits as Drudge and the MSM would do their hardest to ignore him for obvious reasons.
"And, not to be provocative, but if Klein understands economics what is he doing on the left?"
I know what you are getting at but it's a combination of things that make Klein deserving of his spot.
1. He writes well and puts forth intelligent arguments unlike the majority of the mainstream leftist bloggers. You may disagree with his conclusions but can you name another lefty blogger who doesn't work for the Nation that would put as much effort into their arguments as much as Klein?
2. He is not a radical so his ideas will be taken seriously by TBTB in DC.
3. He's young (25) and attractive. This may seem insignificant but it's not. This is another reason why Klein is on the list and another lefty economist like Brad DeLong isn't. Also, Yglesias's ugliness is mitigated by his hipness - he posts about pop culture and sports on his blog as well.
"I can think of a great many bloggers with a following and traffic who have not and never will get a gig with the MSM out of it."
They reason why is because they are either stupid or hold the wrong opinions. Markos Moulistas is a moron and most liberals don't give two shits about what he thinks despite him being an ardent supporter of the Democratic Party. Roissy has a huge following and the only MSM gig he could possibly get would be his own reality show on VH1. Could you imagine the mayhem if they gave him a column in the NYT or WaPo? LOL.
1. Paul Krugman NYT
2. Rush Limbaugh TalkRadio
3. George Will WaPo/Newsweek
4. Thomas Friedman NYT
5. David Brooks NYT
6. Charles Krauthammer WaPo
7. Glenn Beck FOX/TalkRadio
8. Frank Rich NYT
9. Andrew Sullivan Blogger/Atlantic
10. Karl Rove WSJ/FOX
11. Sean Hannity FOX/TalkRadio
12. David Broder WaPo
13. Peggy Noonan WSJ
14. Rachel Maddow MSNBC
15. Arianna Huffington HuffPo
16. Fareed Zakaria Newsweek
17. Maureen Dowd NYT
18. E.J. Dionne WaPo
19. Bill O'Reilly FOX/TalkRadio
20. Keith Olbermann MSNBC
21. Kathleen Parker WaPo
22. Glenn Greenwald Blogger/Salon
23. Nicholas Kristof NYT
24. William Kristol Standard/WaPo/FOX
25. Robert Samuelson WaPo
26. Dick Morris NYPost/FOX
27. Eugene Robinson WaPo
28. David Ignatius WaPo
29. Josh Marshall TPM
30. Mark Levin TalkRadio
31. Holman Jenkins WSJ
32. Bill Moyers PBS
33. Richard Cohen WaPo
34. Jonah Goldberg NRO/LATimes
35. Gail Collins NYT
36. Ruth Marcus WaPo
37. Steven Pearlstein WaPo
38. Joe Klein Time
39. Anne Applebaum WaPo/Slate
40. Michael Kinsley Atlantic
41. Matthew Yglesias Blogger/AmProspect
42. Joe Nocera NYT
43. Ronald Brownstein Atlantic/Nat'lJournal
44. Steve Benen Blogger/WaMonthly
45. Lou Dobbs CNN/TalkRadio
46. Bret Stephens WSJ
47. Kimberley Strassel WSJ
48. Harold Meyerson AmProspect/WaPo
49. Ezra Klein Blogger/WaPo
50. Hendrik Hertzberg New Yorker
Please keep in mind the overlap...here are the totals:
WaPo: 15
NYT: 8
Blogger: 7 (Those who are primarily bloggers)
Talk Radio: 6
FOX: 6
WSJ: 5
Atlantic: 3
MSNBC: 2
AmProspect: 2
Newsweek: 2
Other: 12 (one of each)
One small thing to be corrected is that you have William Kristol as only 0.9 of you, but he is better known as Bill Kristol, under which name he outranks you considerably.
Does Roissy count as a pundit anyway, regardless of whether people are looking for him or the airport? I wouldn't consider Hugh Hefner, Larry Flint, Dr. Ruth, or Dan Savage to be pundits.
Anne Applebaum is ethnically Jewish.
Anne Applebaum is ethnically Jewish.
That reminds me of a recent comment on iSteve about how she is filtering out the Jewish involvement in the Gulags. Alexander Solschenizyn's "200 years together" just makes a mockery of that. I guess that's why it hasn't been published in the US in English.
Sviggie,
Are you still trying to think of how to explain how helping individuals of another ethnic group is a sign of ethnocentrism? I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
BTW, did your ancestors come from the same part of England that T-99's did? "Svigor" looks suspiciously like a portmanteau of the name of a Slavic poster on a website you used to link to here ("Majority Rights"?).
Kabala --
Dowd is a pundit, yes? Roissy is head and shoulders beyond her (and anyone else in the NYT for that matter).
If you started a blog called "Dulles in DC", your Google search numbers would probably look pretty good too.
"Roissy in DC" is the number one hit on google for roissy. Given that 70%+ of traffic goes to the 1st hit for most google results (as you will know if you sell anything over the internet), and given that he gets almost 500 comments a day,
it's a safe bet that Roissy is genuinely extremely widely read.
Roissy is the top hit if your browser is configured as being in the US, but not necessarily in the rest of the world. In Sweden, where I am, you get the airport first.
I consider myself moderately well-informed about politics, economics, etc.
Looking through the list, I've never heard of 10 of the 50. Sure - there are another 20 I don't read (who needs to read Glenn Greenwald?), but I've heard of them and know they're influential.
As for the nepotism angle - how many of them have pundit parents, and how many had otherwise prominent parents? Does Arianna Huffington count as "nepotism", since she became prominent by marriage? (Her father was a journalist, but WP doesn't say in which country.)
"BTW, did your ancestors come from the same part of England that T-99's did? "Svigor" looks suspiciously like a portmanteau of the name of a Slavic poster on a website you used to link to here ("Majority Rights"?)."
He's not a slav, he's nordic but I still have no idea why he continues to post under a slavic handle considering most WNs are nodricists and don't like slavs all that much.
BTW, did your ancestors come from the same part of England that T-99's did? "Svigor" looks suspiciously like a portmanteau of the name of a Slavic poster on a website you used to link to here ("Majority Rights"?).
I've explained this about a hundred times here, lol. My da's family hails from southeast England (not SW, as I posted recently - brain fart) and my ma's Irish/English. Pretty much all Briton here.
(And yes, my handle is a portmanteau of Svyatoslav Igorevich)
Ethnocentrism is a much better explanation of Jewry's behavior than ideology or altruism. here's hoping Steve reconsiders the Komment Kontrol on part 2 of that post because I don't think it was over the top.
"“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”
-John Cage
To me that reads like a childishly inept attempt by Mr. Cage to rationalize his lack of natural talent. If he was capable of seeming interesting to anybody after 1 or 2 minutes, he wouldn't have had a need for such excuses.
This list would make Pollyanna weep.
He's not a slav, he's nordic but I still have no idea why he continues to post under a slavic handle considering most WNs are nodricists and don't like slavs all that much.
Now that's just funny, considering you put your finger right on it and still have no idea....
:D
considering most WNs are nodricists and don't like slavs all that much.
What> The Croats and Germans got along great!
Rachel Maddow denies that she's Jewish and says her upbringing was Catholic. But I bet she has Ashkanazi heritage. She says her father has a "Russian" background.
A Jewish background for Maddow wouldn't surprise me.
Jews are smart -- what's new? But they're also urban. That's a major consideration. Jews are not 3% of America's highly urban population. They and various half-castes are probably closer to 20% of the whites in the major nerve-centres. In that case, their overrepresentation is given some more perspective. The guy who pointed out here that it's all somewhat irrelevant anyway, because no one reads Krugman or any of the other blowhards -- and kids think Simon Cowell is more famous than God -- is probably closer to the important truth. Heigh-ho.
Speaking of Jews and the Media...
Former Baskeball star John Salley to Adam Carolla on Carolla's podcast after Carolla made a joke about Jewish slaves making the pyramids: “You seriously don’t get in trouble talking about Jews?” Paul Mooney (black comedian) said 'I don’t talk about gays or Jews…I want to work in this town' and you constantly say things about Jews.”
Carolla often discusses race and ethnicity. It may be the end of him eventually. I wonder how many other actors/comedians, etc. want to keep working so they don't ever mention Jews or gays?
"What> The Croats and Germans got along great!"
Croats are the exception that prove the rule. :)
""Roissy in DC" is the number one hit on google for roissy."
It's true he snagged number one, but after that it's six pages (at least; I got sick of looking) of the airport.
"In any case, the number of searches for roissy in the US has close to doubled over the course of 2009."
Maybe I did something wrong, but I checked the same thing and saw no notable increase. The name had a big spike in 2004 for some reason, then went back down again.
wtf? no mention of the fact that a huge number of anglo-sphere isteve readers mispell the last name sailer as sailor.......
the list of ratios presented here in this article needs to be redone to account for the massive number of web searchers who change the sailer swiss "e" to an english "o".....
btw: of course the search term "steve sailor" presents its own set of complications.........
but if we're talking about a french airport skewing the roissy results then we need to talk about the very common mispelling of isteve's last name.....
The only person on that list who could really be called conservative is Lou Dobbs.
if you guys are done whispering about the unspeakably powerful jewish/catholic cabal, (you guys DO realize how laughable and pathetic you sound, right? ever'thang would be all better if only hymie wasn't keepin' you down??
I realize how nervous and uncomfortable you sound. Something similar can be heard every time jewish disproportions are criticized.
50% of the list is jewish. It's probably 100% philo-semitic. And for some strange reason anyone who finds this troubling has to be reminded, constantly, that they will be mocked for it. You might as well drop the pretense and simply remind us that it will soon be literally unspeakable, or at least illegal. That's how laughable and pathetic the subject is.
The demographic I'm most concerned with here hasn't been mentioned yet. It's an issue "the columnists and bloggers and broadcast pundits who shape the national debates" (in the Atlantic's view) are especially adept at keeping from being debated.
Which of these people favor genocidal levels of immigration, whether shaped as "amnesty", "comprehensive immigration reform", or "open borders"?
Dobbs, Hannity, and Limbaugh have taken more or less negative positions concerning illegal immigration, which could be seen as being at least half opposed. The rest I know something of are more or less in favor.
There is at least one person on the list with an explicitly dim view of Whites and Christians.
Harold Meyerson - Economy? What Economy?:
Republican conventions have long been bastions of de facto Caucasian exclusivity, but coming right after the diversity of Denver, this year's GOP convention is almost shockingly -- un-Americanly -- white. Long term, this whiteness is a huge problem.
Harold Meyerson - Hard-liners for Jesus:
As Christians across the world prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it's a fitting moment to contemplate the mountain of moral, and mortal, hypocrisy that is our Christianized Republican Party.
. . .
We've seen this kind of Christianity before in America. It's more tribal than religious, and it surges at those times when our country is growing more diverse and economic opportunity is not abounding. At its height in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was chiefly the political expression of nativist Protestants upset by the growing ranks of Catholics in their midst.
Is there anyone on the Atlantic list who has written similarly negative things concerning jews? Something that approximates Meyerson's statements? More tribal than religious indeed.
The demographic breakdown is a fact. Its causes and implications are worth talking about, but the first step (as with all kinds of other issues) is to openly agree on the facts. When people are uncomfortable with the implications of some facts, they will often attack people for bringing the facts up, but this is silly.
A stunning proportion of the influential pundits are Jewish, nearly all are white, and the overwhelming majority are male. Many came to their positions by family connections, but more came up mainly on their own ranks. This information needs to be more widely understood, because it highlights how very different is the set of influential pundits than most Americans. (Note: That doesn't mean the pundits are less accurate or deserving or whatever, just that they're drawn from a very different set of backgrounds than the rest of the country.)
The demographic breakdown is a fact. Its causes and implications are worth talking about, but the first step (as with all kinds of other issues) is to openly agree on the facts. When people are uncomfortable with the implications of some facts, they will often attack people for bringing the facts up, but this is silly.
A stunning proportion of the influential pundits are Jewish, nearly all are white, and the overwhelming majority are male. Many came to their positions by family connections, but more came up mainly on their own ranks. This information needs to be more widely understood, because it highlights how very different is the set of influential pundits than most Americans. (Note: That doesn't mean the pundits are less accurate or deserving or whatever, just that they're drawn from a very different set of backgrounds than the rest of the country.)
Just a nitpick: Roissy and Steve are doing something much easier than the MSM pundits. Those pundits overwhemingly stay inside the Overton window on every subject. (Many work for employers that require adherence to some ideology, as with many think tanks.)
Steve is a bright guy, but he comes off so well against the high-end punditry largely because he's *not* required, as a condition of his position in the world, to ignore facts and logic and experience in order to remain within the window of "respectable" opinion.
That window is an awful guide to reality and morality, because it's driven by social/political/economic factors that don't even pretend to understand reality.
Should we attack Iran to stop their nuclear weapons program? Should we assume that the black/white performance gap reflects the effects of discrimination? Does CEO pay have a big impact on likelihood of future financial crises?
Most of those pundits will have opinions on all those questions. Overwhelmingly, they won't have much expertise. (If Juan Cole opines on the Muslim world, or Charles Murray on education, or Brad DeLong on financial regulation, they're worth listening to. But on which of these would we expect most of those pundits to be experts?)
Steve isn't forced to opine on any of these issues, and he's allowed (by his own choice, to his cost) to come to conclusions as logic and evidence and intuition dictate to him, even when that is not in the window of acceptable opinion. So what he's doing is much easier than what most of those pundits are doing.
Anonymous said...
-John Cage
To me that reads like a childishly inept attempt by Mr. Cage to rationalize his lack of natural talent. If he was capable of seeming interesting to anybody after 1 or 2 minutes, he wouldn't have had a need for such excuses.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Agreed, his atonal, dissonant avant-garde crap is not to my taste. A college roomie went to one of his concerts in the early 'Seventies at a Twin Cities orchestra hall. Waiting for the concert to start, listening to the shuffling feet, sneezes, coughs, lowkey chatter...it dawned on the audience that the seats were wired with microphones at various places in the hall. They were listening to themselves. Realizing that was to be the entire concert the audience drifted away, my roomie the last to leave, thought it was great.
She went on to achieve some regional recognition as a bluegrass artist, Kate MacKenzie, and was the backup band for Keillor's Lake Woebegone radio program on NPR for some years.
Tanstaafl,
the fact that someone like Meyerson could write something so genocidal and toxic in a mainstream newspaper is absolutely mind-boggling. They keep pushing and pushing and then they wonder why we question the over-representation figures. Most of us really are gullible suckers not equiped to live in a multi-cultural society. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses I guess.
Peter A: The USA should abandon the idea of a permanent capital city - we should probably let each state capital take a turn every 6 months or something.
I assume that was tongue-in-cheek, but it's actually quite an interesting idea.
It wouldn't do any good at this point - the USA as we [or our parents] knew it is mathematically doomed - but 100 years ago, if our elites had had to spend [permanently] roving 6-month tours of duty amongst normal folk in what would come to be known as flyover country, then it might have done a little to temper the more extreme aspects of their messianic nihilism.
And you gotta wonder what might have happened to the Roman Republic if Caesar, Crassus and Pompey [or Antony, Octavian and Lepidus] had been forced to rotate through hayseed backwaters like Modena, Narbonne, and Utica.
Brostein at the atlantic says goldfarb and rothstein
Three more people I have NEVER heard of.
I do place a modicum of trust in MSM reports of fact (something exploded, someone died, court was in session, etc.).
I don't.
Ethnocentrism is a much better explanation of Jewry's behavior than ideology or altruism.
Yes, but ethnocentrism of WHAT?
You could just as easily say that "ethnocentrism" was the "explanation" of silly idealistic universalisms like "We hold these truths to be self evident, blah blah blah", but what is the ETHNICITY which was able to produce that point of view?
And how do you even draw a distinction between the ethnicity and the point of view in the first place?
I could expound upon the question, but then I'd have to venture off into No-No Territory and Komment Kontrol would disapprove.
Are there any among the top 20 that both beat and tied Michelle Malkin(pun intended)?
Although I tell you what - if you seed a conversation with the right key words and catch phrases and communicational cues, and if you just sit back and listen and let them do the talking, then it's simply amazing the things that you can hear people say.
That's for sure. People know what they're allowed to say and what's taboo. As long as you look a little glum when you say anything bad about ethnic diversity (darn pesky nuture) you usually get knowing nods in return.
I was thinking more along the lines of their point of view, not ours.
It's suprisingly easy to prompt an elitist into a conversation [or a monologue] which sounds something like the following:
"We should surround all those crazy Christian fundamentalists - with their Bibles and their guns and their whining brat children and their mohawk haircuts living in squalor in their trailer parks - and cut off their food supplies and starve them all to death.
"And then for the smart ones - who manage to figure out a way not to starve - we'll send them off to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and freeze 'em all to death."
As for the Nazis, they hated Poles and Czechs (due to competing territorial claims) and Russians (due to "Bolshevism"). They accepted Germans of Polish descent (even in the upper ranks of the SS) and kidnapped many Polish children with blond hair and blue eyes to be raised as Germans. There never was the clear, unequivocal hatred of Slavs that there was for Jews or even Gypsies.
As for neo-Nazis or white nationalists, there is not a lot of anti-Slavic feeling even among neo-Nazis in Germany. And "Nordicism" (the idea that only certain European ethnic groups are really white) is usually directed more at southern than eastern Europeans.
.... 100 years ago, if our elites had had to spend [permanently] roving 6-month tours of duty amongst normal folk in what would come to be known as flyover country, then it might have done a little to temper the more extreme aspects of their messianic nihilism.
Or two permanent regional American capitols -- Washington and Richmond?
Or two permanent regional American capitols -- Washington and Richmond?
That was 145 years ago.
Patrick - seems to me you are buying into the standard off-the-shelf concept of 'hate' there.
The Nazi attitude to the Jews cannot be compared to their attitude to other groups.
Are neo-Nazis and white nationalists the same thing? Ive no idea if neo-nazis really exist at all. WN types seem to be popping up more often these days but Im not sure they are anything to do with nazis.
Some heavy-handed obfuscation here.
Sailer's definition of white is extremely broad. Without the category of Jewish, you'd think politics was dominated by pro-whites.
The Jewish category frames it better. In addition you should add a category for multiculturalist and pro-Israel or philo-Semitic. Now we understand what kind of political tyranny we're working under.
That list seems very biased. Towards the end, there are several people I've never or barely heard of. The idea that, say, Hendrick Hertzberg, Kimberley Strassel, Bret Stevens, or Joe Nocera are having a bigger impact than, say, Patrick Buchanan, Paul Craig Roberts, Justin Raimondo, or Mr. Sailer, is rather quaint.
Not sure what is meant by HBD:
Happy Birthday?
Homebrew Digest?
Human Biodiversity?
Here Be Dragons?
Or something else? You can look here.
It’s interesting that South Asians, not East Asians, have won the National American Spelling Bee for several years now.
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