Remember when Chris Anderson popularized the idea of the power law distribution in The Long Tail? The basic idea is that a few popular albums or books will sell like hotcakes. But a large percentage of products will linger in “the long tail.” That’s the place on this graph representing stuff that ain’t selling nearly so well. Sure, long tail stuff does sell. But it’s eclectic and it’s cool or valuable to an elite few. Still, it’s neither Britney Spears nor Glenn Beck. Long tail products are for the discerning consumer.

Lately a few enlightened libertarians and conservatives have begun to lament both the popularity and lack of intellectual rigor of mainstream political media. This is the stuff that is not on the long tail.

 
But these very smart critics (producers and consumers) of political media are in the long tail. Never mind that these very same people didn’t bother to check to see if the term epistemic closure was spoken for; they grabbed the phrase to bludgeon best-selling entertainment pundits on the center-right. Why? Because they’re more discerning than their higher earning counterparts. But again, these elite libertarians and conservatives consume media in the long tail. They like their politics thoughtful, rigorous and well-researched. But guess what? Most people, that is – most voters – do not. And in a constitutional republic, elections are the only game in town.

Now, I’m not here to defend the Becks and Levins of the world on intellectual grounds. In fact, I consume political media from the long tail, too. I get the fact that populists of the right – like the Maddows and Olbermanns of the left – are not intellectuals. So I’m not really interested. But here’s the rub: if they were intellectuals, they’d be on the right side of the power law graph and consumed by very few — namely a few self-satisfying intellectuals who might be so bold as to employ the phrase “epistemic closure” in everyday parlance (notwithstanding its origins).