Cruel and Usual Punishment

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Weingarten's Experiment in Action

Investigative humorist Gene Weingarten endures 24 hours of constant punditry, and lives to write about it.

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I'm back, and I'm here to make my report. I should begin by correcting one important impression.

Not fire-hosing, exactly. Waterboarding.

IT IS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14. (For the men in the audience, that would be Valentine's Day.) I have chosen this day not just for its iconic value -- notions of affection and comity might tamp down hostility and partisanship -- but also for the day's position in the cycle of spin. I want an ordinary, representative day; this one is 48 hours after the Potomac primaries and five days before the next one. There is not yet a clear Democratic nominee. Roger Clemens has just unconvincingly twitched, glowered and harrumphed his way through his congressional testimony about the use of performance-enhancing drugs and has already been taken to task for it. Nothing big and newsworthy is on for this Thursday.

For this experiment, conducted alone in a windowless room on the ninth floor of the Arlington offices of washingtonpost.com, I chose my wardrobe carefully. I remembered something I'd learned 35 years ago from James Howard Kunstler, my friend and colleague. At the time, we were both young reporters in Albany, N.Y. Kunstler had been assigned to wrestle a trained grizzly bear. He knew there was no way to win, but he figured he could at least get flattened in style.

So I, too, wear a tux.

I begin at daybreak, on the theory that this will permit me to get my sea legs as a nation wakes up, yawns, scratches and sleepily begins contemplating the news and assembling its opinions. So, 6 a.m. is when I turn on the six TVs, the two radios and my laptop, which is set to the following rotation of blogs: the Drudge Report, Daily Kos, The Fix, the Corner, Captain's Quarters, Buck Naked Politics, Instapundit, the Page, the Hotline, Michellemalkin.com and, of course, Memeorandum, to make sure I will miss nothing else. When I need to use the bathroom, the computer will go with me.

The clock hits 6, everything blinks to life, and, instantly, all manners of hell are in the process of breaking loose.

MSNBC says James Carville told Larry King that Hillary Clinton has to win Texas and Ohio to remain in the race! On the Moderate Voice, a poster named Damozel says John McCain has capitulated on torture and is now dead to right-leaning Dems! A caller to Joe Madison's radio show complains that Tavis Smiley was an arrogant snob when he snubbed Michelle Obama by not letting her speak somewhere! A body language expert on "Fox & Friends" believes Clemens was lying because he clenched his jaw and licked his lips! On MSNBC's "Morning Joe," someone named Chuck is venturing the bold opinion, and I'm quoting this directly, that to get the nomination, Hillary's best strategy has to be "to start winning, not losing." Because a beagle has won the Westminster dog show, FoxNews is predicting a wave of beaglemania. Instapundit links to another blog that links to another blog, where a blogger says he "still can't decide whether Obama is an empty suit, or worse, a truly excellent dissembler." On something called Israellycool.com, a blogger wonders with suspicion why the mainstream media have ignored the insidious fact that, for his birthday, North Korea's Kim Jong Il got a floral basket from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. The Page reports that Hillary Clinton campaign chief Terry McAuliffe says he is "more confident than I have ever been" that Hillary will get the nomination. Immediately, at least four blogs furiously link to a quote by David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, saying that an Obama victory is nearly inevitable.

People are awake. People are opining, furiously. Only a little more than an hour has passed.

I've got these TVs set up so that five of them are muted. The sixth is my master control; this one has sound, and, minute by minute, I punch up on it whatever seems, from the images, headlines and crawls, most interesting on the silent ones.

There's an item on FoxNews that I switch to hungrily, even though it does not belong in this story because it is not punditry. But, under the circumstances, it has an insistent power of its own. That is because it offers no toehold for discussion, deconstruction or serious argument. It is, in the end, simply and wonderfully no more or less than what it is. I live and breathe in it for the moment.

The headline reads: "Funeral Called Off After Mom Wakes Up!"