Tim is one of the very few people I know of who can product posts like this one: posts which, when I’m finished reading them, seem so perfectly clear, cogent and direct that it’s hard to find a single word I’d care to quibble with. Not that I agree with him all the time, of course. But this time I do (actually, I’m probably willing to go somewhat further out on this limb than Tim).
This makes me wonder, though, about the compensation structure of top-tier professional writers. I have a hard time believing that Charles Murray is feeling the financial pinch of the collapsing media industry, his complaints about Times op-ed rates notwithstanding. It seems a lot more likely to me that his compensation has shifted away from writing-for-hire and toward various cushy sinecures. Rich people tend to have friends who’ll help them stay rich, after all. I have a feeling that the way things went down at the Chicago Tribune is fairly typical. Or maybe I just took that last season of The Wire a bit too much to heart.
Anyway, rich get richer, proletariat squeezed, dog bites man, Fox News Edge at 11.
Thanks Tom! That means a lot coming from you.