>who would you have us listen too? policy wonks....<
I assume "policy wonk" is a catch-all term for a growth industry that includes academics, think tank types, TV talking heads, government specialists, columnists, writers and so forth. Since there is no licencing or credentialing system for "wonkdom," anyone can call himself or herself a Policy Wonk. We who contribute to this thread, certainly, if we wished, may describe ourselves as wonks whether or not we earn our bread from our output.
While I leave it to Safire to root out the origin, it seems to me that the term became popularized with the advent of Bill Clinton, described then as the ultimate wonk. (If Clinton is a top-notch wonk, where does George W. fit on the scale?) Before Clinton, however, wonks were usually known by specialty in genteel, respectful and scientific terms.
For example, we had our Kremlinologists. We had Sinologists.
Now, the Kremlinologists studied carefully the group photos of the Politbureau to determine who was up and who was down and who was standing where. They read between the lines of Pravda and party journals and wrote for scholarly publications themselves and competed to get onto op-ed pages of the NY Times and, if they didn't make the Times, try the Wash Post. Foreign Affairs was a feather, better than getting into the Atlantic or Harpers.
One magazine which paid best was the Reader's Digest. And yuu didn't have to sweat as hard since their articles were short and you didn't have to bother with damned footnotes. Easy money.
But the wonks wouldn't be seen dead writing for the Reader's Digest, even though the magazine had by far the largest circulation in the world and was read in umpteen languages. Not only was Reader's Digest unhip, it would ruin one's intellectual standing even to mention it in polite conversaion in other than derisive terms.*
In the decades after WWII, the Kremlinologists gave us the benefit of their wisdom as they helped us appreciate the puzzle wrapped in an enigma. All the while the USSR was unraveling. And when it did, one of those Kremlinoligists was said to have remarked:
"You know, the people who got their information about the Soviet Union from the Reader's Digest had a better understanding of what was happening than we did."
Then there are the romantic Ivy League sinologists who drooled the feet of Mao; I'm not speaking of the poor, brilliant State Dept. men who were hounded from their jobs by our home-grown evil, Joe McCarthy). But that's another story.
God, did I write all this? Well, it's good therapy. Now please take me back to the nursing home.
* A poll taken in India of the country's educated elite some years ago asked what was their favorite foreign publication. Reader's Digest won in a landslide. |
