Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was reading, as is his wont, Outside the Beltway yesterday. Of all of the items posted there, one drew his attention more than others. James Joyner wrote a bit called the "Professionalization of the......

Furthermore, I’m not sure why amateurism in the sense of not having a clue about the things one opines about is all that desirable. The lure of political blogs, to me at least, is that one often gets better insights from them than from the professional punditocracy. Many if not most of those who are regulars on the television and radio talking head circuit simply don’t have much to offer as commentators. They might be attractive and have soothing voices but most of them are just recycling the conventional wisdom. Many of us watched those shows and thought “I could do better than that!” but had no way to prove it.

I guess my only comment here is that POlitics is a fairly unique situation, in that unlike many other areas where 'professionals' work, is an area that, with sufficient smarts, about anyone can write about, and do a fair enough job with it; One need not be a preofessional in the field to write on the topic with effectiveness.

Econimics blogs, for an example from the other hand, are usually better with some level of professional involvement.

(Shrug)

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