By Pepper of the Daily Pepper
Wonks rule.* Wonks do most of the heavy lifting of the blogosphere in that they are the individuals who wade through facts and pull out the information that applies to us. Essentially, wonks are nerds who specialize in politics. Instead of a pocket protector and slide rule, they arm themselves with reams of policy papers that they kindly translate for the rest of us. Those facts are repeated in "Dick-and-Jane" format by politicians, and the wonks get little to no credit.
Wonks don't get the love they so richly deserve because they aren't considered "cool." Wonks today are dismissed as being Clintonian throwbacks because we have a bunch of "cool kids" in the White House who prefer culture-war arguments. It's easier for them to make it seem that grown-up life is still one big fat high-school cafeteria - or, more appropriately, one long episode of "24." We have a party-hearty preppie in the White House, who gets off the hook for everything because the masses want to be him. Pundits don't help matters by perpetuating the myth that Bush's coolness overrides all. Even writers for supposedly "liberal" magazines like Vanity Fair - in this case, Michael Wolff - say that the liberals' real problem is that they are too uptight. The message is, "Don't listen to that wonk! He/she is uncool! And, besides, that makes my brain hurt!" As a result, self-described wonks are left in moments of crisis, wondering if their work really does matter, as you've seen below. It's all a trick. Wonkery matters so much that non-wonks on the other team try to marginalize them.
