Opinion: Bob, you made the rants too long
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
A provocative piece in the Washington Monthly poses (and sort of answers) the question “Why Is Bob Herbert Boring?” Herbert is the columnist who, along with the brief-exceeding economist Paul Krugman, anchors the left side of the New York Times op-ed page. The author of the Washington Monthly article, T. A. Frank, is pretty brutal about Herbert’s marginalization by the chattering class:
I’ve spoken to a couple dozen journalists of the center-left variety, and most, after insisting on being off the record or unnamed, confess to reading Bob Herbert rarely, if ever. ‘I’ve literally never heard someone say, ‘Hey, did you read Bob Herbert today?’ Never in my entire life,’ said one reporter for a Washington political magazine. Said another: ‘I haven’t read him in years.’ The New Republic may have captured it in a recent headline for a hit piece on John Tierney: ‘How could a New York Times columnist be more boring than Bob Herbert?’
For the record, I don’t think my Pittsburgh pal John Tierney’s N.Y. Times op-ed column was boring. But I see why Herbert gets accused of failing to interest readers. It’s partly because of the theory floated in the sub-headline on Frank’s piece: ‘The Perils of Punditry for the Powerless.’
One of my favorite quotations, variously attributed to Jean de la Bruyere and Horace Walpole, goes: ‘Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.’ Herbert, as Frank notes, feels for ‘the disadvantaged and disenfranchised of America,’ but not in a way that engages hyper-educated NYT readers who drool over Maureen Dowd’s drollery. Frank suggests that if Herbert were to ‘think about who his audience is and what he wants it to do, he could be one of the most powerful liberal voices in the country.’
Maybe, but as long as Herbert is preaching, even to the converted, he may have to reckon with Sam Goldwyn’s famous observation that, if you want to send a message, call Western Union — or, these days, send an e-mail.