Big Media Ezra takes issue with Glenn Greenwald's post, thinking it in part to be an attack on authority. I didn't read Greenwald's post that way, and it wasn't what he meant, but it does let us advance the discussion a bit.
The industry of modern punditry is entirely anti-expert and anti-authority. Sure experts and authorities are brought on at times to educate the masses, though frequently those "experts" are simply experts because some right wing think tank bestowed the title on them, but most people who regularly comment on current events in the pages of newspapers and on various roundtable discussions on TV aren't usually experts in anything, and certainly aren't experts in all of the things they are brought on to opine about.
Punditry is all about credentials. Your standing as a pundit is derived from whatever fancy title you have and the number of hours you've logged on TV. Somehow one day you make it into the club and voila! You're a Pundit!
It wasn't bloggers who put Ann Coulter on TV with the chiron "constitutional scholar" (or something simliar) every night for a year...
