Servile Hack Watch: ‘Time’ editor declares Obama’s like Mandela, only better
One of the reasons for which we can be grateful for the 2008 election campaign is that it revealed to young people who might have been contemplating a few years at journalism school what a waste of time, money and effort such an ‘education’ represents. How embarrassing it was to watch America’s finest representatives of the 4th Estate collectively exceed the credulity of a lobotomized Moonie as they heaped encomiums upon Mr. Obama’s as yet totally untested head. Why spend all that time ‘learning’ the ‘craft’ of journalism if servile worship of a messiah figure is what it ultimately amounts to? Better to become a carpenter. Worst of all was Evan Thomas, the boot-licking editor of Newsweek who once infamously described Obama as ‘sort of God’ ‘standing above us all’- although in all fairness he later helpfully explained that it was only a metaphor. Gee, thanks.
Anyway, I thought the worst of all that was over. But now, just in case any young people have forgotten the lessons of 2008 and are wondering whether to sink their cash into such a useless qualification, here comes Time managing editor Richard Stengel to the rescue. Writing in the introduction to a new self help book he declares:
It is impossible to write about Nelson Mandela these days and not compare him to another potentially transformational black leader, Barack Obama. The parallels are many. … And while it took twenty-seven years in prison to mold the Nelson Mandela we know, the forty-eight-year-old American president seems to have achieved a Mandela-like temperament without the long years of sacrifice.
Just think of all the stories you have to file, all the ass you have to kiss, to be appointed managing editor of a purportedly reputable journal such as Time. And this is what he comes up with. Astounding.
O children, waste not your money on the ‘education’ that produces the Stengels and Thomases of this world. Spend it on something more useful instead. Like candy floss. Or tickets to the zoo. Or packets of Philips Colon Health.
H/t: Radley Balko
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This is typical American arrogance. OUR leader is just as good as YOUR leader, and in only half the time! Think how much better he’ll be when he’s as old as your guy.
Our journalists need to give more consideration to how the rest of the world sees us.
“Our journalists need to give more consideration to how the rest of the world sees us.”
Our journalists DO that, and when they do, right-wingers jump all over them, saying, “Why do the liberal mainstream media hate America?”