From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

Okay, last week we started the show with politics, despite a pretty thin media angle, because, come on, it was the Iowa caucuses.

But this week, we're doing it again.

Only this time, I swear, with a much, much better

media story. And by better, I mean a pitiful, pathetic New Hampshire primary pundit implosion,

a historic Dewey defeats Truman pie in the face, the Creamney remnants of which TV stars

including CNN's Lou Dobbs, CBS's Katie Couric, and NBC's Brian Williams are still scraping

off their kissers.

The savants, the pundits, all of the political experts need to do a little seeking a little seeking of forgiveness because everyone was so

wrong in this, and breathtakingly so.

We'll be hearing more from those ubiquitous pundits and polls in the weeks ahead.

But Iowa and now New Hampshire should remind us all, in the end, the only voice that really

matters belongs to the voters.

Give us a few weeks. We'll promptly forget the lessons of this debacle in polling predictions

and primary politics. We will all live to screw up another day, though our performance in

New Hampshire will be hard to beat. That was NBC's Brian Williams stating the painfully obvious. they will live to screw up another day because campaign journalism and especially political punditry is all about prognostication, a savory soup of polling data, history, and supposed expertise, which is all well and good, except that the electorate doesn't

necessarily eat the soup. The experts are still sorting out the polls. Was the sampling

unrepresentative? Did the sample lie? Did the human factor? Actual living, breathing

voters deciding on living, breathing candidates,

rudely ignore the inevitability of a Clinton defeat.

...