You, too, can be a pundit.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: So-called pundits - Pundit Watch - Column

While watching TV on Sunday morning, with cream cheese on your bathrobe and your hair looking like a squirrel's nest, do you ever think, "Hey, I could be a pundit"? Well, after the required stops in make-up and wardrobe, you could. You don't have to know anything about anything. But there are a few rules.

You have to be real good at vague, content-free assessments and far-fetched, irrelevant predictions. You need to focus on the imagery of events, not their substance. You must sound emphatic and exude total certitude. And, whenever possible, you should buy into the conservative framing of topics and events. Let's see how it works.

Confused and dispirited about Bosnia? Still don't really grasp the politics or possible solutions? Not to worry--here's how old pro Morton Kondracke handles this one on The McLaughlin Group. "Just for once I'd like to see all-out bombing and see what it does." See? Tres simple. Just like at your local bar.

Now, on to the Waco hearings. How would you respond to John McLaughlin when he asks whether Janet Reno will have to leave office as a result of the Waco hearings which, of course, have only just begun? If you can ignore the fact that this is a totally stupid question and are prepared to say, "Not a snowball's chance in hell," you are definitely pundit material.

Over on Meet the Press, where a recent topic was race relations and affirmative action, you would be expected to hold forth about the decline of values in America (a perennial favorite with the pundits). You would need to hold your own against Representative J.C. Watts Jr., Republican of Oklahoma, who opined that "Martin Luther King never talked about race," and asserted that "we've lost our ability to get along, to love each other." See, as long as you don't know much about history and have memorized a few Hallmark cards, you're golden.

Watts was nicely complemented by talk-show regular, intellectual heavyweight, and Iron John graduate Bill Bennett, who gave some more heft to the discussion by adding, "Values can't come from government ... they have to come from fathers and churches," and "I think what happens on TV, in the movies, and on radio ... has more to do with the future of this country than the public policies we are discussing here."

Now, no one ever has to back up stuff like this, and since there were no female panelists, there were no pesky women around to challenge Bennett on his paean to patriarchy.

Once in a while, a spoilsport like Kweisi...