Spexpertise (n): the flawed knowledge and misplaced self-confidence that one achieves having only read blogs and news stories on a topic.
It is a portmanteau combining spectator and expert.
The worst spexperts start blogs and spread the disease of their spexpertise, spawning spexpert squareds and further derivative abominations to stalk the halls of the Internets.
Shield your eyes, dear readers, lest my spexpertise confound you with its plausible partial understanding and hidden agenda!
Would you agree that there is a very real possibility that the vast majority of Canadian voters are at best political spexperts? Better a spexpert than casting a completely uninformed vote? Maybe the answer is that it is a waste of time to vote at all. Levitt and Dubner have some thoughts about that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/magazine/06freak.html
A bit of a tangent, but interested in your thoughts please, sir.
Pete,
I detect a certain spexpert sympathy in respect of political discourse, there. Maybe your low expectations are blinding you.
Political participation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Policies/dp/0691129428
Also here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter:_Why_Democracies_Choose_Bad_Policies