Alterman, a media critic more recently known for "What Liberal Media?," here dissects what he calls the "punditocracy:" The high-profile columnists and commentators who, he argues, wield far too much opinion-making power in Washington and other centers of power. The problem with pundits, Alterman argues, is that they peddle a kind of pseudo-journalism: Opinion, ideological cant, and outright speculation clothed in rhetorical garments that imply a solid factual basis and an unassailable level of certainty. Their pronouncements may be entertaining, he admits, but we mistake them for reality at our peril. Alterman traces the rise of the punditocracy from Walter Lippman in the 1930s to the likes of George Will, Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, and others in the early 1990s. His principal concern, however, is to show that the emperor has no clothes. He does this by dissecting the prejudices, ideological hobby-horses, journalistic skills, and track record of a dozen or so key members of the punditocracy--skewering them with scrupulously cited quotations from their own work. This approach reaches its zenith in the final chapters, where he analyzes conservative pundits' steadfast refusal to come to grips with the fall of the USSR, and lambastes pundits of all political persuasions for mindlessly beating the drums of war after the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.

The fact that the first edition of the book (the one I read) ends on those notes reflects the extent to which the now-available revised edition had become necessary. When Alternan first wrote, conservative talk radio had just begun its ascendancy, Bill Clinton was unimpeached, George W. Bush was a marginally well-known governor, and the Twin Towers still stood. We've come a long way since 1993, yet (to judge by the undiminished power of the punditocracy) we've come no way at all. ( )