Contrarianified

This is easily the best thing that Jonah Goldberg has ever written. The highlights:

What was once Kinsley’s contrarian instinct has been dogmatized into official corporate policy. Weisberg has admitted as much in interviews. Freelancers especially seem to have figured out how to get through Slate’s editorial defenses: Pitch a story, any story, that’s counterintuitive, and someone on the receiving end will say “brilliant!”

Let it be said, lest Slate readers are confused on this point: Contrarianness is a great and good thing—when driven by reason and facts. But contrarianness for its own sake is often the very definition of asininity. Mavericks who break from the herd to point out hard truths can be heroes. Mavericks who break out from the herd just to get noticed are pretty annoying. If the emperor has no clothes, by all means say so. If he doesn’t, saying otherwise for the sake of saying so is not only a tiresome shtick, it also reduces your credibility.

Slate’s editorial voice is not Olympian by any means. It’s more like that of an Ivy League kid who can skip class and still get an A on the test.

Right. I still check Slate with reasonable regularity, but the schtick is pretty transparent and pretty old. Saletan, Weisberg, Kaus, and Dickerson all seem to be pretty much the same guy, although Kaus is clearly the ugliest personality. As Goldberg notes, though, what sets Kaus apart isn’t so much his project as his ineptitude in carrying out that project.