I can’t stand Cokie Roberts. For me, she personifies the world of snobby, know-it-all Washington punditry. Raised a D.C. political brat, she is now a pampered Washington insider who can’t see issues except through myopic Beltway lenses.
The tone of her commentaries oozes with contempt for her audience as she regurgitates the conventional thinking of Washington’s elites. She offers nothing new, only a bored, haughty recitation of the court whisper.
A low point in journalism—and the period when I became somewhat embarrassed to tell people I’d studied the craft in college—came back when ABC News paired Roberts with Sam Donaldson for its Sunday morning show, This Week.
For an example of Roberts’ thinking, read this column, written with her husband back in 1997, wherein they argue that the internet could become a threat to representative democracy—by giving more power to the people. Horrors!
“If you’re on-line, you’re inside the Beltway,” in the opinion of Graeme Browning, author of the book Electronic Democracy, which argues that the Internet is making individuals more politically powerful. Sounds good, but is it?
Cokie doesn’t want to hear from you. She just wants to keep pontificating from her comfortable perch. Someone get her off of NPR.