Another savvy column, Dick. I found the DeSantis campaign launch event especially disturbing. Elon Musk described “the legacy media” as “something like five editors of newspapers…a tiny elite cabal” & Twitter’s mission in part to dis-intermediate America’s leading major news organizations and in so doing to save us all: “Twitter was expensive,” says Musk, but “free speech is priceless…”
How long before "That was insane, sorry" becomes the apology of choice for the power set? But I digress from the point of this trenchant column. You have hit on a tension in journalism made worse by the attention economy--we extol people for reasons that often turn out to be eclipsed by circumstance, but when people are consistent, their story doesn't change much, making it hard to engage readers with something new about them. Also, readers can become uncomfortable when comparing themselves to the person, what Tracy Kidder and Dick Todd called "the problem of goodness." A note on Gates: at least in his tech days, he would attribute his success in part to luck (in part).
As usual, Dick provides the best journalism analysis around. If only more folks would listen to him. Elon Musk is being by the media much as Donald Trump was in 2015-16, and amusing toy. They enabled both to become dangerous. Without th media buildup, thry might have just been eccentric
A solid intro into whether the press and journalists are purposeful or naive enablers of the rich and crazy, but I'd be more satisfied if you and Alter and others would take the next step and tease out the "Why?" Without that analysis, it sort of looks like schadenfeunde. A few points to illustrate. First, Time Magazine's MOTY? Too easy a target as prior "Man of the Year" picks have included Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin (twice), Richard Nixon (twice), Ayatollah Khomeini, and our current "very stable genius" DJT. I believe a review would reveal that journalists justified these selections without being foggy-minded about their selection's money or power or psychosis. Second, while Musk's genius was evident by relative comparison, a storied biographer isn't necessary to catalogue that journalists have been cawing like ravens on roadkill about his flaws and the mystery of his ideas. Examples: stories about Musk's unconventional personal life and collective head-scratching about why the book value of Tesla's stock had no relationship to the number of cars it made. Maybe you're simply suggesting that Musk's craziness and failures erase or effect an existential offset to his genius? If so, that's a tough argument. Today who can doubt that Musk/Tesla forced the US auto industry to embrace EVs a decade earlier than planned? Or that StarLink helped Ukraine survive 2022? Or that SpaceEx jump-started space-industry privatization and kicked NASA's lethargic butt?
Another savvy column, Dick. I found the DeSantis campaign launch event especially disturbing. Elon Musk described “the legacy media” as “something like five editors of newspapers…a tiny elite cabal” & Twitter’s mission in part to dis-intermediate America’s leading major news organizations and in so doing to save us all: “Twitter was expensive,” says Musk, but “free speech is priceless…”
How long before "That was insane, sorry" becomes the apology of choice for the power set? But I digress from the point of this trenchant column. You have hit on a tension in journalism made worse by the attention economy--we extol people for reasons that often turn out to be eclipsed by circumstance, but when people are consistent, their story doesn't change much, making it hard to engage readers with something new about them. Also, readers can become uncomfortable when comparing themselves to the person, what Tracy Kidder and Dick Todd called "the problem of goodness." A note on Gates: at least in his tech days, he would attribute his success in part to luck (in part).
As usual, Dick provides the best journalism analysis around. If only more folks would listen to him. Elon Musk is being by the media much as Donald Trump was in 2015-16, and amusing toy. They enabled both to become dangerous. Without th media buildup, thry might have just been eccentric
Isaacson's bio of Steve Jobs was a puff piece and his da Vinci was such dreck I didn't finish. I don't hold my breath over his Musk bio.
The most essential gift: a built-in, shockproof shit detector.
A solid intro into whether the press and journalists are purposeful or naive enablers of the rich and crazy, but I'd be more satisfied if you and Alter and others would take the next step and tease out the "Why?" Without that analysis, it sort of looks like schadenfeunde. A few points to illustrate. First, Time Magazine's MOTY? Too easy a target as prior "Man of the Year" picks have included Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin (twice), Richard Nixon (twice), Ayatollah Khomeini, and our current "very stable genius" DJT. I believe a review would reveal that journalists justified these selections without being foggy-minded about their selection's money or power or psychosis. Second, while Musk's genius was evident by relative comparison, a storied biographer isn't necessary to catalogue that journalists have been cawing like ravens on roadkill about his flaws and the mystery of his ideas. Examples: stories about Musk's unconventional personal life and collective head-scratching about why the book value of Tesla's stock had no relationship to the number of cars it made. Maybe you're simply suggesting that Musk's craziness and failures erase or effect an existential offset to his genius? If so, that's a tough argument. Today who can doubt that Musk/Tesla forced the US auto industry to embrace EVs a decade earlier than planned? Or that StarLink helped Ukraine survive 2022? Or that SpaceEx jump-started space-industry privatization and kicked NASA's lethargic butt?