They play ESPN in the common areas at work. Some days, it's delightful: you'll catch a baseball game in the afternoon or, this week, the gloriously green Masters golf tournament. Most days, it's boring: a studio show of people talking about sports. To make such shows interesting, they either focus on the gambling or try to make one of the hosts say artificially controversial things. Stephen A. Smith is their best contriver of controversy. But it's all in his delivery, not his actual opinions. Most of what he says—the Patriots weren't ready for the Super Bowl, Tiger Woods is too old and too broken to compete at a high level, this or that star is a whiny diva—are correct and thus the prevailing view. While they all try to be outlandish, almost none of the talkers hold a view that a majority wouldn't agree with. Try as they might, the takes are not very hot.A lot of punditry falls into this trap. Take the first essay below, Chris Arnade goes off on how Americans tolerate too much public disorder because we won't force the mentally ill to involuntarily submit to treatment. While he might be right, in that we don't hospitalize the people one sees defecating and drug-using in the train station, his opinion doesn't appear to be the minority view. As best I can tell from an hour of reading, most Americans share the views he expresses. The counter-argument, about why our democracy doesn't deliver these policies, is a puzzler, to be sure. But my point is that this hot take isn't that controversial—most people agree.
As controversial or unpopular as an idea might be, a good pundit knows that to be convincing, you have to express the idea in its most agreeable way, featuring its best parts. It's an art, though, because when they do this too much, the argument seems like a hoodwink attempt. In the second piece below, we have some rightwingers, the sort of folks usually concerned with the public fisc and with using less of it for social benefits. But instead of arguing for their cuts, which aren't popular, they're arguing against fraud. Who could object to that? You don't have to be a Gallup expert to know that, aside from crypto enthusiasts, most people don't like fraudsters. One doubts that's the Manhattan Institute's full program, though. They're making the popular argument instead.
Reading
America and Public Disorder
Many public spaces in the U.S. show visible signs of mental illness and addiction, causing fear and disorder. Unlike other countries, we tolerate this behavior instead of enforcing rules or providing proper care. To fix this, we need mandatory treatment and stricter public norms to protect everyone.
Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud
California has lost at least $180 billion to fraud, according to officials and experts.
The Case for Prohibiting Vice
Many defenders of vice argue the law should not ban "victimless" acts because they only harm users. The harm-based debate is stuck because both sides use harm arguments against each other. A better case against vice is that addiction and the industries that sell it undermine human freedom and self-rule.