I was wrong

I may not have written the headline, but I did type such things as “You just have to ask, ‘Who is managing Michael Buble’s career?'” Also, “Buble’s handlers are now doing their darnedest to tank his prospects.” Not only was I wrong about Bublé’s career trajectory, but I was also spectacularly wrong.

At a time when stars come and go — remember the 2013 best new artist Grammy winners, fun.? I don’t either — Michael Bublé has established a rock-solid career distinguished by its consistency. Just check out his tour schedule. Week after week, he traverses the globe, going from one sold-out arena to the next, singing a mix of cheerful pop-lite and Rat Pack classics. Kudos to him. Anyone who can make such a handsome living out of presenting any variation on the swing idiom deserves a medal. And what was my critical judgment in 2004? “The great American songbook deserves better.” My bad.

Fifteen years is a long time in pop music circles, and yet that’s how long ago I was predicting the Canadian crooner was finished. And here he was this year, starring in a Super Bowl ad for fizzy water. I’m not disparaging him. Very little testifies to mainstream success so unambiguously as being featured in a Super Bowl commercial for fizzy water.

It was that ad, and Bublé’s tremendous likability in it, that reminded me of that old review I wrote. It took me a long while to dig out the yellowing scrap of newsprint, but once I did it confirmed my suspicion I was wrongheaded. Which presents me with the opportunity to do something we scribblers rarely do and admit to my error.

The Washington Post’s longtime political writer David Broder would end each year with a column detailing what he had whiffed on in the previous 12 months. Broder was, of course, violating the pundits’ code, a set of unwritten rules that include prohibitions not only on admitting mistakes but against revealing there are limits to one’s erudition in the first place.

I remember witnessing the proper adherence to the code back when I used to work on “The McLaughlin Group” years ago. One Friday afternoon, about 10 minutes before taping, a junior producer came into the greenroom to inform the panelists John McLaughlin had decided to change the last topic to missile defense. One of the talking heads that day was an editor from Time magazine. In a panic, he sputtered, “But I don’t know anything about missile defense!” One might think this was a grave affront to the code, but the editor redeemed himself. He had the producer bring him a magazine article on missile defense, and he skimmed it before going on set.

When we got to the final segment, McLaughlin did his “Issue No. 4!” shtick and tossed the topic-opening question right into the lap of the man from Time. The editor did not waver; he did not falter; he showed no uncertainty; he betrayed not a hint of the fact that minutes before he had been utterly clueless about all things missile defense. In short, he was magnificent. He denounced the entire enterprise as impossible, a “Star Wars” fantasy, and cited the scientific consensus with a confidence that suggested he was a rocketry expert himself. Never mind that he was wrong in nearly every particular, which I say with all the unearned assurance of a pundit myself. He had gone from abject ignorance to unassailable mastery in minutes. It was a glorious affirmation of the pundits’ code.

Glorious but destructive. Perhaps a reason journalists get held in such low regard is that the reading public has caught on to the code and all the phoniness that attends it. What would happen if reporters and critics were less grudging in admitting their mistakes? Would we buy ourselves a little desperately needed credibility?

Let’s try. In 2004, I said Michael Bublé was going nowhere because he was “a prisoner of his assortment of hipster affectations.”

I was wrong.

Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?