The Art of Being A Pundit

I'm glad I have my own show, because the tension between these hosts who work together is normally not good. I guess that I think Kornheiser and Wilbon do it as well as anybody--and I don't think they do that good. Here I have to remind myself that I'm talking about living people and not like ... historical or fictional characters. And that's because Kornheiser and Wilbon are victims of their own success.

I'm saying, I guess, that Kornheiser and Wilbon are a little bit like The Simpsons. They were great for several years--let's round up and say they were good for a decade. They had personality, edge, charisma--the necessary components to being good. But to stay on the air for longer than a decade, a sports personality has to make compromises. The edge just can't be real for longer than a decade. (Maybe the same is true for an animated sitcom but I'm not sure--the analogy was more the number of years one can be good for.)

The "chemistry" on PTI is the template between chemistry between hosts on these shows--a balance between disagreement bordering upon anger--and easy amiability. So today, just as it was last week, last month, and last decade, Tony and Mike severely disagreed. They are on the verge of getting up and walking out, you might think, if you didn't know so very very much better ...

I mean that's my point. The anger just cannot be real and this has to become apparent over so many years. The guys start to seem insincere. I mean, putting aside the in-booth tension, this is somewhat true for any sports pundit whatsoever: if their act is built on some passionate anger, well that should either explode into something else--maybe a leap forward into Zen Buddhism, maybe be a nervous breakdown and rehab, or a heart attack. But an anger that is put on, as a show, daily for 18 years? It's clearly for show. It's not real. You shouldn't think that it's real.

It occurs to me now that what I'm saying pertains much more to Stephen A. Smith than it does to Wilbon or Kornheiser, but I couldn't bring myself to watch Stephen A. Smith unless you paid me more than you're paying me. So ... I'll just say that our PTI guys are a little guilty of being low-energy Steven A. Smiths at times. When they pretend to get angry at each other over these topics.

I want to finish by saying one more thing about the analogy with the Simpsons. Bseyond the number of years, the other similarity is--the show must go on. A successful show starts to exist just out of inertia, and it becomes a zombie version of itself. I think the PTI guys have done relatively well at staying occasionally smart and relevant. But when you keep a creative endeavor going for long enough, it starts to make decisions based on safety rather than on excitement. There is an audience, it is paying the bills and then some, it's a golden goose,n  so everybody just be safe so we can all take our checks home and feed our families.

That just has to be the mentality on set, and amongst all who work there. There's no incentive to be daring, to take risks, creative or otherwise. Don't offend anybody, just visit the daily topics and tread water around them. And so while I used to think Tony often had pretty incisive takes on things, I often find him having not enough to say (I think he tries to hide it by reading some numbers) while Wilbon is almost shameless about avoiding taking any stance. For example, a month ago Wilbon was prompted to answer, during a pre-draft discussion, whether Bill Belichick might trade down. "I don't know! He might, he might not!" As if taking a stance against making predictions was some refreshing take. Dude, the set-up was for you to make your prediction--this is what you do! 

What Wilbon's good at is still emoting as if he does have something to say. Today Kornheiser and Wilbon took up Paul Pierce's claim that LeBron is not among the top five of all time. Seems like a ridiculous claim but Wilbon, though he disagreed with it, wouldn't lambaste it because ... he's not willing to strenuously disagree with just about anybody who's anybody! He reserves his most angry rants toward the NCAA or "statistics nerds" ... amorphous shadowy groups that in some cases don't really exist. 

But then Tony knows Wilbon's wrong, and he should shred him for it, but he's, I don't know, tired? It's as if he is ready to go for maybe two topics per day, and then he totally whiffs on the third one. Except the ratio isn't that good. But he and Mike trade angry declarative remarks and then ... move on. Of course they're good at it--I mean, I have to admit that. Like, what makes the show work is that they know the whole deal is trying to make each other angry, because the anger and passion will lead to eloquent arguments being boisterously made. I just don't think there's really anything close to anger there anymore.