To journalists there could have been little surprise in the
announcement that former Vice President Gore was to teach a class
in journalism at Columbia. Not only did he have some experience
as a hack on the Nashville Tennessean before beginning his
stellar political career, but politics and journalism are
increasingly intertwined, to the point where they are becoming
indistinguishable from one another. I don’t mean just that we are
beginning to see journalists becoming politicians (like Pat
Buchanan) and politicians—or at least political handlers like
George Stephanopolous or Mary Matalin—becoming journalists. This
kind of thing will undoubtedly become more familiar, as we can
tell from the case of Miss Matalin, whose return from television to the
new Bush administration portends more going back and forth
between governing and covering government.

But the distinction between journalists and politicians, at least
at the top of their respective professions (if I may misuse the
term in the usual way) is blurring in another way as both become
sub-types—the “reality” version, if you will—of the modern
media star. Perhaps the pattern for our future leaders will lie
somewhere between Miss Matalin, whose charming double-act with
her husband, the Democratic consultant James Carville, was
beginning to look old, and Governor Jesse Ventura of Minnesota.
The latter has gone from television wrestler to talk-show host to
governor to, most recently (and while still serving as governor),
chief announcer for the World Wrestling Federation’s Extreme
Football League (or XFL), which started broadcasting on