Clarting

One of the more depressing aspects of the news media in New York is the way in which weekly magazines take it upon themselves to deliver up Deeper Analysis of the news. All too often, this takes the form of commissioning an academic of some description to bloviate meaninglessly on, say, the photographs coming out of Abu Ghraib.

Here's Naomi Wolf, in New York magazine:

The ubiquity of porn may be one reason that young GIs in this war were so willing to photograph, transmit, and engage in acts that mimic porn in both its more innocent and savage forms.

And here's Susan Sontag, in the New York Times magazine:

You wonder how much of the sexual tortures inflicted on the inmates of Abu Ghraib was inspired by the vast repertory of pornographic imagery available on the Internet -- and which ordinary people, by sending out Webcasts of themselves, try to emulate.

I don't know if there's a name for this fallacy, but it seems to go something along the lines of "we need something to say on this subject; you have a reputation as a thinker with something to say; therefore whatever you write for us on this subject must say something". Sontag's essay, which contains nothing of interest whatsoever, has even made the cover of the magazine, presumably on the strength of her name alone. When can we return to the time when magazines published interesting writing, rather than interesting writers?