Reason.com - Free Minds and Free Markets
Reason logo Reason logo
  • Latest
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Archives
    • Subscribe
    • Crossword
  • Video
  • Podcasts
    • All Shows
    • The Reason Roundtable
    • The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie
    • The Soho Forum Debates
    • Just Asking Questions
    • The Best of Reason Magazine
    • Why We Can't Have Nice Things
  • Volokh
  • Newsletters
  • Donate
    • Donate Online
    • Donate Crypto
    • Ways To Give To Reason Foundation
    • Torchbearer Society
    • Planned Giving
  • Subscribe
    • Reason Plus Subscription
    • Print Subscription
    • Gift Subscriptions
    • Subscriber Support

Login Form

Create new account
Forgot password

Politics

Matt Welch & Nick Gillespie Among "The Only Pundits You Need To Pay Attention To Between Now And The Election"

Nick Gillespie | 11.30.2011 5:22 PM

Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL
Media Contact & Reprint Requests

The folks at Business Insider have compiled a list of 50 (count 'em) pundits who demand your attention between now and whenever the next election is. Sandwiched between Ann Coulter and Rick Santelli are two folks Hit & Run readers may recognize:

Where To Find Them: At Reason Magazine and Reason.tv respectively. 

Why You Should Follow Them: Matt Welch, editor of Reason, and Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason.tv,  are exactly what you want libertarians to be: funny, cosmopolitan, skeptical and aloof. They are pungent writers who distrust both parties and their celebrated stenographers who are more commonly known as "opinion writers." 

These two libertarian stalwarts co-authored "The Declaration of Independents" and you can expect them to suprise you. Drug laws, teachers unions, military adventurism, crony capitalism, policing tactics, and goo-goo social engineering are all on their list of targets. 

Twitter: @mleewelch and @nickgillespie

Whole list is here.

Start your day with Reason. Get a daily brief of the most important stories and trends every weekday morning when you subscribe to Reason Roundup.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

NEXT: Chinese Turning Cash Into Wine

Nick Gillespie is an editor at large at Reason and host of The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie.

PoliticsCultureMedia
Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL
Media Contact & Reprint Requests

Hide Comments (55)

Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.

  1. My Myself and I   13 years ago

    You share a tie for 47th out of 50. Woo-hoo!!

  2. Tulpa   13 years ago

    Nick is indeed pungent, especially after he's been walking around all day in that leather jacket.

    1. RoboCain   13 years ago

      I hear it's manly, but not overpowering.

  3. My Myself and I   13 years ago

    Points off for BI for the lack of Jacket references.

  4. Tulpa   13 years ago

    And I don't want libertarians to be cosmopolitan or aloof. WTH?

    1. Heroic Mulatto   13 years ago

      And I don't want libertarians to be cosmopolitan or aloof. WTH?

      Yes, God forbid someone has knowledge of what life is like in other places and has traveled more than 100 miles from one's birthplace.

      1. klyst   13 years ago

        Yes, God forbid someone has knowledge of what life is like in other places and has traveled more than 100 miles from one's birthplace.

        And yet has the same political perspective as all the other C-list hipsters in NY. I've never been impressed by the insight or supposed lack of parochialism of those who wear their cosmopolitanism as a badge of pride. In the era of modern communications, even people in remote locations gain knowledge of life in other places and, in the U.S., almost no one remains within 100 miles of their birthplace for very long.

        1. Heroic Mulatto   13 years ago

          In the era of modern communications, even people in remote locations gain knowledge of life in other places.

          If you think this is true, you haven't been remote enough, my friend.

          1. klyst   13 years ago

            Possibly. I've never been anywhere without basic TV service, at least not for very long.

            1. Heroic Mulatto   13 years ago

              Heh. My wife's family didn't have electricity until she was 12. That's what I'm talking about when I say "remote". 🙂

      2. Tulpa   13 years ago

        That's not what cosmopolitan means. That's more like "well-traveled" or something along those lines.

        Cosmopolitan means that you consider yourself "citizen of the world" and your primary viewpoint is global in nature.

        1. Slap the Enlightened!   13 years ago

          I've always considered the best place for citizen of the world types is in the territory under the jurisdiction of the authority they've pledged their fealty to.... either the South Pole, or 12 nautical miles offshore from any sovereign state....

          1. cynical   13 years ago

            Something something gambol.

        2. Heroic Mulatto   13 years ago

          Going out and seeing the world with your own eyes tends to give one a primarily global point of view, no?

  5. Tulpa   13 years ago

    So there are "only" 50 pundits you should follow between now and the election? I don't know if I've followed that many in my whole life.

  6. _   13 years ago

    Hipsters!

  7. My Myself and I   13 years ago

    You do realize BI just made the list so 50 high profile people on the web would link to them. Suckers.

  8. Joshua Corning   13 years ago

    cosmopolitan

    Actually i like my libertarians to be more like Old Mex who is no Cosmo...of course he is not really paleo either.

    Old Mex is his own form of libertarian.

    Anyway as libertarian journalists i suppose being cosmo is not so bad.

    1. Bingo   13 years ago

      Old Mex is an Austrian An-Cap... pretty sure I've seen the aging beaner commenting over at Mises.org before.

    2. cynical   13 years ago

      like Old Mex

      Does that mean hysterical or asinine?

      1. joshua corning   13 years ago

        Does that mean hysterical or asinine?

        Old Mex is also wrong about a stable currency being an individual right when in fact it is a community right.

        None of this has to do with the Cosmo vs Paleo scale...on that scale Old Mex transcends it to a higher plane of libertarian understanding.

  9. Gojira   13 years ago

    I've heard of those two guys. Pretty shady, if you ask me. They are not to be trusted. They're shills for Big Liberty.

  10. Tman   13 years ago

    Does this mean that Matt and Nick only get one invitation to the Business Insider POLITIX 50 Gala and Dinner?

    So do they take each other? Cause that'd be kinda weird.

    1. Jon Schaffer`s Right Hand   13 years ago

      Perhaps they exist as an inseparable unit, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

      1. Kibby   13 years ago

        This is the greatest image ever.

        1. Slap the Enlightened!   13 years ago

          and it gets even better when you remember how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ended up. Her Majesty's privates, indeed......

  11. Jon Schaffer`s Right Hand   13 years ago

    And they have Dave Weigel at #6. Ouch!

    1. Destrudo   13 years ago

      Considering some of the the other "pundits" on the list, I wouldn't have even admitted to being mentioned on it. Wiggle isn't even the worst of them, though he gets #1 in any bad complexion power rankings fo' sure.

      1. Joshua Corning   13 years ago

        Why make fun of Wiggle's skin problems which he has no control over when mocking him as a hack journalist is so much easier?

        1. NAL   13 years ago

          Yeah, I have a problem with making fun of anyone's appearance, speech impediments, etc. It's one of the things that makes Rush Limbaugh so contemptible at times (even though I agree with him often on issues). He makes fun of Barney Frank's speech impediment, Henry Waxman's nostrils, Hillary's ankles, etc. when their liberal positions are the much more important issue.

          1. peppers   13 years ago

            I have a problem with making fun of anyone's appearance, speech impediments

            Ugly stammerers always say, or try to say, things like that.

          2. Tulpa   13 years ago

            Sorry, people who sell their souls for time on TV open themselves up to mockery of their physique.

            Thankfully I have a body that looks like it was sculpted by Picasso so I don't have to worry about that.

            1. rather   13 years ago

              Pics

    2. yonemoto   13 years ago

      yeah but they have andy levy at #9!

  12. ?   13 years ago

    goo-goo

    wut

  13. Colin   13 years ago

    Being compared to Ann Coulter really isn't something to be proud of.

  14. yogi   13 years ago

    This is followed by a list of 8 (just 8?) people Obama should fire including this:

    http://www.businessinsider.com.....oe-biden-9

    1. Joshua Corning   13 years ago

      The fun part is that by calling him the only "Adult" in the Obama administration they are damning exactly what they are trying to bless.

  15. Hugh Akston   13 years ago

    I got a picture of Nick & Matt when I saw them at Book Soup in Hollywood. The talk they gave was very, uh, informative.

  16. Joshua Corning   13 years ago

    Anyone else get the feeling that the entire list is simply a hit piece on Huffington?

  17. Tyler   13 years ago

    HotAir is anything but libertarian. I read it because I have to but I can't stand that place. Its up there with Redstate... neocons x10

    1. Tyler   13 years ago

      Glad to see Glenn Greenwald and Jack Hunter in there.

  18. El Commentarioso   13 years ago

    What about Balloon Juice?

    1. Scruffy Nerfherder   13 years ago

      Joke right?

  19. klyst   13 years ago

    Notice that the picture captures Nick's superpower in action - hyperfast finger wagging.

  20. mad libertarian guy   13 years ago

    These guys work at Reason?

    And they wrote a book?

    Who the fuck knew? I wish they'd fucking tell us this shit.

  21. CharlesWT   13 years ago

    "Sandwiched between Ann Coulter and Rick Santelli..."

    Oooooo! How kinky!

  22. kyst   13 years ago

    The descriptions in the f'ing slideshow are quite telling. Liberals are "voices" for liberalism, conservatives are the obviously rare "reality-based" conservatives or humorous conservatives with a sense of proportion, liberals "understand" and have insight into the "religious right". And then there is this jewel: Philip Klein is one of the few right-leaning pundits that educated himself on health-care reform.

    Who knew that Rick Santelli launched the Tea Party?

  23. kyst   13 years ago

    I'm a little confused as to why Arianna Huffington is on the list but Andrew Breitbart isn't. They both are major players primarily because they are exploiters and innovators adapting the talents and content of others in the internet age. Also, why is Matt Drudge on the list? He's just an aggregator. How often does he generate useful content or punditry himself?

  24. Slap the Enlightened!   13 years ago

    Damn. That list reads like a Who's Who of "What's Wrong With American Politics". If those are the pundits people are really paying attention to, we are *so* fucked........

    1. klyst   13 years ago

      I doubt that any of them were more influential with voters than Oprah was.

    2. joshua corning   13 years ago

      No worries.

      99% of the American Voting public have no idea who any of those people are.

  25. Scruffy Nerfherder   13 years ago

    Caption contest

    "To the Kochmobile!"

  26. Dodgy Dojo   13 years ago

    OK dude that makes a whole lot of sense man. Wow.

    http://www.ano-post.tk

  27. Windypundit   13 years ago

    Hey, that's a great picture of Matt and Nick that Business Insider used. It's almost as good as my picture of Matt and Nick.

Please log in to post comments

Mute this user?

  • Mute User
  • Cancel

Ban this user?

  • Ban User
  • Cancel

Un-ban this user?

  • Un-ban User
  • Cancel

Nuke this user?

  • Nuke User
  • Cancel

Un-nuke this user?

  • Un-nuke User
  • Cancel

Flag this comment?

  • Flag Comment
  • Cancel

Un-flag this comment?

  • Un-flag Comment
  • Cancel

Latest

Should the
Civilization Video Games Be Fun—or Real?

Jason Russell | From the June 2025 issue

Government Argues It's Too Much To Ask the FBI To Check the Address Before Blowing Up a Home

Billy Binion | 5.9.2025 5:01 PM

The U.K. Trade Deal Screws American Consumers

Eric Boehm | 5.9.2025 4:05 PM

A New Survey Suggests Illicit Opioid Use Is Much More Common Than the Government's Numbers Indicate

Jacob Sullum | 5.9.2025 3:50 PM

Judge Orders Tufts Grad Student Rumeysa Ozturk Be Released on Bail From Immigration Detention

C.J. Ciaramella | 5.9.2025 3:17 PM

Recommended

  • About
  • Browse Topics
  • Events
  • Staff
  • Jobs
  • Donate
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Contact
  • Media
  • Shop
  • Amazon
Reason Facebook@reason on XReason InstagramReason TikTokReason YoutubeApple PodcastsReason on FlipboardReason RSS

© 2024 Reason Foundation | Accessibility | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

r

Do you care about free minds and free markets? Sign up to get the biggest stories from Reason in your inbox every afternoon.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

This modal will close in 10

Reason Plus

Special Offer!

  • Full digital edition access
  • No ads
  • Commenting privileges

Just $25 per year

Join Today!