Snoozy William Safire's replacement is John Tierney, who offers his first column today. I myself would have liked a contributor more in the Paul Samuelson academic-with-the-gift-of-connecting-to-regular-folks mode--someone like Amartya Sen. Or perhaps a public intellectual like Fareed Zakaria.
Tierney suggests that columnists like him face competition from betting websites, which have better predictive capabilities than columnists. But who said that it was his principle role was to be a prognosticator. It's not Jimmy the Greek that we seek, nor John the Apostle, but rather John the Intelligent and John the Wise. Tierney notes his concern about outsourcing his job to betting pools, but why not really outsource the job--how about the brilliant if often wrong Arundhati Roy, whose pen is sharper and mightier even than Maureen Dowd's? (Today, one wonders if she was not in fact right about the Narmada Dam, which was opened accidentally, killing some 100 people. Much too high price to pay for any electric power.)
Tierney's concern reminds me of Maureen Dowd's concern that it's harder to be a columnist because of competition from blogs, who beat her to the punch with the clever quip.
Should the NY Times be seeking a new columnist not worried about being scooped, my contact information is just a click away.