President Barack Obama looks like he’ll win re-election. Obama looks like he can lose. Michele Bachman could never get the Republican nomination. Michele Bachmann could be the surprise GOP nominee. The political class would never allow a debt ceiling default. A debt ceiling default could happen.
Where does the ever-shifting conventional wisdom come from? A little known secret: it’s quietly created and packaged by Harry Saslavsky of “I Say U Say Corp.” Saslavsky writes and distributes the conventional wisdom themes used by seemingly all-knowing pundits. Most editions have short shelf lives. You hear them then suddenly never hear about them again.
I got a rare interview with Saslavsky during a bad week for him: Orders were down.
“It’s that Mark Halperin who works for TIME and is a talking head on MSNBC,” he grumbled. “On Morning Joe he called Barack Obama a d-word almost spelled like ‘duck’ and was indefinitely suspended by MSNBC. He was one of our biggest distributors of Washington conventional wisdom. Thank God he’s still doing his Time internet page!”
“What is the conventional wisdom?”
“It’s what pundits or experts say based on often unverifiable assumptions stated and accepted as fact. Conventional wisdom doesn’t work unless it’s proclaimed with arrogant, smug certainty.”
“Is your product durable?”
“Highly. Conventional wisdom edges out contradictory information and leaves little seeds that sprout later. The product only vanishes when it totally falls apart or is willingly discarded by the user. But these days it can still thrive on talk shows, internet sites, and Twitter long after it has been scrapped or outdated.”
“How long has conventional wisdom been around?”
“It has been been around before people were sure the world was flat. The actual term dates back to 1838.”
CNN’s John Avlon points to a May Gallup poll indicating a majority of Americans want a third party plus another poll finding 41 percent of Americans are self-described independents. If more Americans are independents is that less fertile ground?
“Independent indeshmendent. As long as they buy the latest conventional wisdom I peddle and my customers distribute, I’m satisfied. And most will: accepting conventional wisdom eliminates tiring independent thought, inquisitiveness and skepticism…”
“So you only sell conventional wisdom narratives?”
“Oh, no we also created conventional talk show guest performance guidelines. National Interest columnist Dick Polman grasped our guidelines in his Public Interest column when he wrote about Halperin’s suspension:
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.