I guess I didn’t realise it till now: the media are “professional thinkers who lead the nation’s intelligentsia.”

Well, that’s what I got from reading David Sirota’s piece, “Intelligentsia against intelligence,” in Salon, in which he criticises David Broder and Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post:

As leading opinion-makers, Broder and Diehl are paid to carefully ponder issues and then offer their considered thoughts. That’s not part of what they’re supposed to do—it’s what they are singularly employed to do. It’s how they earn their living and credibility—indeed, it’s their entire raison d’être. And yet, these leading lights of the intelligentsia are overtly preaching anti-intelligence, insisting the president must avoid taking time to think through his actions.

I worked for a major metropolitan newspaper at the beginning of my professional life, and I can assure you that while those with whom I worked displayed the usual amount of intelligence there was no one there I’d’ve considered a member of the intelligentsia. In fact, that applies to all members of the media I’ve met.

When someone says they’re honest that’s usually a warning to distrust everything they say and promise.

So when a member of the media claims that the media are “professional thinkers who lead the nation’s intelligentsia” . . . well, I have to treat that with equal skepticism and suspicion.

When it comes right down to it, believing in an “intelligentsia” is a lot like believing in Santa Claus.