How to be a pundit

Memo to New York Times/Guardian* columnists: it would be a public service were you to follow the great Myles na Gopaleen’s example:

Not the least of my duties is keeping an eye on the Editor of this newspaper and rebutting, for the benefit of our simpler readers, the various heresies propounded in his leading articles. Saturday’s article was agreat shock to me…

And again:

Today, undismayed by many a reverse, I take up the cudgels on behalf of the Irish nation against the historic enemy of the Irish nation – the Editor of The Irish Times…

*Actually all papers could benefit from a dose of mutiny in the ranks. It proved too much for the Times’ long-suffering editor who eventually succeeded in moving na Gopaleen’s column to another less high-profile part of the paper, safely quarantined from the editorial page.