Matt Welch & Nick Gillespie Among "The Only Pundits You Need To Pay Attention To Between Now And The Election"
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
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You share a tie for 47th out of 50. Woo-hoo!!
Nick is indeed pungent, especially after he's been walking around all day in that leather jacket.
I hear it's manly, but not overpowering.
Points off for BI for the lack of Jacket references.
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.
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.
If you think this is true, you haven't been remote enough, my friend.
Possibly. I've never been anywhere without basic TV service, at least not for very long.
Heh. My wife's family didn't have electricity until she was 12. That's what I'm talking about when I say "remote". 🙂
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.
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....
Something something gambol.
Going out and seeing the world with your own eyes tends to give one a primarily global point of view, no?
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.
Hipsters!
You do realize BI just made the list so 50 high profile people on the web would link to them. Suckers.
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.
Old Mex is an Austrian An-Cap... pretty sure I've seen the aging beaner commenting over at Mises.org before.
like Old Mex
Does that mean hysterical or asinine?
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps they exist as an inseparable unit, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
This is the greatest image ever.
and it gets even better when you remember how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ended up. Her Majesty's privates, indeed......
And they have Dave Weigel at #6. Ouch!
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.
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?
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.
I have a problem with making fun of anyone's appearance, speech impediments
Ugly stammerers always say, or try to say, things like that.
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.
Pics
yeah but they have andy levy at #9!
goo-goo
wut
Being compared to Ann Coulter really isn't something to be proud of.
This is followed by a list of 8 (just 8?) people Obama should fire including this:
http://www.businessinsider.com.....oe-biden-9
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.
I got a picture of Nick & Matt when I saw them at Book Soup in Hollywood. The talk they gave was very, uh, informative.
Anyone else get the feeling that the entire list is simply a hit piece on Huffington?
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
Glad to see Glenn Greenwald and Jack Hunter in there.
What about Balloon Juice?
Joke right?
Notice that the picture captures Nick's superpower in action - hyperfast finger wagging.
These guys work at Reason?
And they wrote a book?
Who the fuck knew? I wish they'd fucking tell us this shit.
Oooooo! How kinky!
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?
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?
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........
I doubt that any of them were more influential with voters than Oprah was.
No worries.
99% of the American Voting public have no idea who any of those people are.
Caption contest
"To the Kochmobile!"
OK dude that makes a whole lot of sense man. Wow.
http://www.ano-post.tk
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.