Media Darling
How do the media decide whom to lavish with inordinate praise?
A recent article about the media’s treatment of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan criticizes the journalistic standards applied to an important political player. The article in Tablet Magazine contrasts the loving media portrayals of Sullivan with a track record that is at best lackluster—if not mildly disastrous.
Says author Jeremy Stern:
Peering through the clouds of vapor emitting from U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s various profilers and character witnesses over the years, here is what we learn: Sullivan is a “once-in-a-generation intellect,” according to Joe Biden, and a “once-in-a-generation talent,” “a potential future president,” according to Hillary Clinton. “The sky’s the limit,” says former Deputy Secretary of State and Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott. “He is somebody of extraordinary intelligence and temperament.” Sullivan has an admirable “habit of continually questioning his own assumptions” and a “methodical, hyperanalytical style.” He is “a genuinely nice guy” and “a good human being” with a “self-deprecating Midwestern modesty” who is a “really good listener” and “loved by everyone.”
This is an interesting portrayal of someone who has as his life’s most important works the liberation of billions of dollars in funds to the Iranian ayatollah regime, the cautious treatment of the Russian dictatorship, and great deference to America’s self-declared enemies throughout the world.
Says Stern:
Jake Sullivan’s rise, and the avalanche of bien pensant flattery that has validated disaster after disaster, contrary to every real-world indicator, as marks of genius, is as sure a sign as any that the United States is once again ruled by a vain and arrogant aristocracy that prizes credentials over experience, and prestige over integrity, and which spends its days endlessly gratifying each other. The resulting stench will not soon be forgotten, especially by the people of Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel, and other nations, and American servicemen and women, who have already paid for the horrifically bad judgment of American commanders-in-chief, and of their high-class servants, with their blood.
This is similar to the type of reporting many of us on the right side of the political spectrum thought had reached its apex in the reporting on Barack Obama. Unfortunately, others on the political right found in the example a method worthy of emulating and applying to a celebrity of their own: Donald Trump. The thinking appears to have been that what worked for the left could also work for the right if done with commensurate devotion.
Rather than applying skepticism to the journalistic subject, skepticism is applied to the subject’s detractors, critics, and opponents. It is if the journalists have taken on for themselves the important task of defending their subjects unrelentingly, as defense attorneys in the court of public opinion. Similar levels of devotion are generally understood to be reserved for the realm of fanaticism applied to a spiritual leader, or as we might say, a cult.
There was some hope the internet would reduce this and similar one-sided nonsense, but instead it seems to have allowed the phenomenon to grow, flourish, and smother the previous aim of reportorial objectivity. Reporters now often act like volunteer PR flacks for certain objects of their attention.
I have no idea what to do about any of this. It often just seems like our natural human tendencies are given enough free rein to develop into pathologies on the internet. And the large-language models of artificial intelligence could very well push the boundaries beyond what we can imagine today, increasing groupie behavior even more.
Afternoon, all. One of our Envirothon graduates is an apprentice falconer, and he brought his hawk to the meeting today. She's a juvenile red-tailed hawk, but full grown with a wingspan over 5 feet. She flew around the trees a bit and didn't really want to come down, even though the students were very quiet, but food worked. The kids were amazed to get such a close look at a large raptor.
I have to go to a Liturgy Committee meeting tonight. The Hispanic Ministry is turning out in force to try to get them to make some decisions. Oy. Maybe there will be wine.
Yeah, never mind...sigh
I may have to give up posting here. sorry