Putting the Pon back in Pontification
James Poniewozik is in the house. In olden days, Poniewozik—not to be confused with fellow James James Surowiecki—had a high-flying media column at Salon, and more auspiciously, wrote many great columns for Suck. He convinced me he was a genius when at the height of the dotcom boom I mentioned in passing that "everybody's talking about the internet millionaires, but nobody mentions the internet thousandaires, who are the clear winners if you just consider ROI," and—almost as if I'd said "Will no-one rid rid me of this turbulent priest?"—Pon immediately went off and murdered the idea. A consummate self-starter, and a consistently sharp, contrarian, and funny writer. Back in Old '99, Poniewozik got hired to be the TV writer for Time; he now reaches a vastly larger audience, and had a big cover story this summer, but in the inevitable way of the power/influence tradeoff, his Time offerings haven't included the heavy helping of salt I prefer in a column.
Anyway, Poniewozik now has a blog. It's done under the auspices of Time, so we must limit our expecations in terms of spontaneity, immediacy, and cusswords (and apparently, links). But it's encouraging to see him back with a form that will allow regular bullshit detection and eyeball-poking. Presumably the more traffic he gets the more his evil corporate masters will let him get away with, so give him some traffic.