Very Serious Person Alert: Mike Grunwald
by David Atkins
TIME Magazine senior correspondent Mike Grunwald tweets:
If Glenn Beck AND Michael Moore think the NSA leaker is a hero…he’s probably the awful person I assumed he was.
— Michael Grunwald (@MikeGrunwald) June 11, 2013
There’s so much asininity here it’s hard to unpack it all. Grunwald assumed that Snowden was an awful person? Why would he do that? Based on a careful assessment of what, exactly? Very little, it seems, by his own admission.
Moreover, how does agreement on opposite sides of the political spectrum guarantee wrong policy? I thought the Very Serious People craved bipartisanship? Or is that the wrong kind of bipartisanship? Is it only bipartisanship if John McCain and Joe Lieberman agree, but not if Glenn Beck and Michael Moore do?
Grunwald’s stance here is everything that is wrong with journalism. Love or hate Glenn Greenwald, he’s doing what journalists are supposed to do: afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted, get a story, and expose what he sees as wrongdoing.
What did Michael Grunwald do on this story, besides lazily parrot whatever conventional wisdom makes the status quo happy? What public interest does he serve? Under what auspice, precisely, does he get to claim the mantle of “journalism” or determine what makes good public policy on this issue?
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