I won’t smack national commentators who immediately took to the keyboard (or phone) after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week. Much of what I read were sincere, if rushed, ruminations about a violent political culture. The New York Times’ entrepreneur Ezra Klein typified a lot of respectful articles: “I did not know Kirk, and I am not the right person to eulogize him. But I envied what he built. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness. In the inaugural episode of his podcast, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California hosted Kirk, admitting that his son was a huge fan. What a testament to Kirk’s project.”
But if the old cliché “Journalism is the first draft of history” was true (if self-serving), the update is “Journalism is the first text of history.” Part of that is because newsrooms are enveloped by the ghosts of profitability, fat salaries (for those at “prestige” publications), the respect of Americans and laid-off/bought-out colleagues. Another is the rise of “citizen journalists” who make a living through podcasts, Substack subscriptions (not much money for the majority of them; also, they’re not edited), and “influencing.” They’re often not reliable. Everybody has to be first, and those who work, or participate in, social media are obligated to immediately present their “hot take,” even if a coherent thought has yet to form in their brains. That’s why a number of people, some prominent (like MSNBC cable analyst Matthew Dowd, a former George W. Bush strategist, who defected to the Democratic Party), some not, were fired after making rude and baseless comments about five minutes after the Kirk assassination. The Times was forced to change its website headline about Kirk’s death several times within 24 hours.
One of the most circulated torrents of hate came from Elizabeth Spiers in The Nation (it still exists!). She wrote: “Many of the facile defenses of Kirk and his legacy are predicated on the idea that it’s acceptable to spread hateful ideas advocating for the persecution of perceived enemies as long as you dress them up in a posture of debate. This is just class privilege.” Spiers, a graduate of Duke University whose writing appears in numerous publications, including the Times, and lives in Brooklyn, isn’t a stranger to “privilege.”
I was stunned on Sept. 10 upon seeing the video clip of Kirk bleeding to death at a campus event in Utah, and repulsed by the minority of people who proclaimed online that he got what he deserved because of his far-right views. (That was in contrast to the New York Yankees, who had a moment of silence before that night’s game.) It defies imagination that political opponents rejoiced in the death of a man they didn’t know, a 31-year-old with a wife and two young children. It was startling to see, online, jokes about the murder, some from people I’m acquainted with. Unlike, say “progressive” Democrat David Hogg, who shouts online and at events he’s allowed to attend, Kirk had a clear agenda and worked tirelessly to achieve his goals. I didn’t agree with a lot of his views—Christian zealotry, anti-immigration, intolerance for gays—but admired his work ethic. That Kirk is now a martyr, ready for canonization, championed as a “healer” without a mean bone in his body, is also exaggerated but that initial “narrative” is another “first text of history” and will subside in the months ahead.
I didn’t agree at all with Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal column last week, but at least she attempted a thoughtful assessment of the assassination. She wrote: “Catholics, when they’d pray over and over with friends, used to call it storming heaven. It isn’t a way of dodging responsibility, it is (if you’re really doing it and not just publicly posing) a way of taking it. So pray now for America. We are in big trouble.”
Isn’t America always, for one reason or another, in “big trouble”? I was born in 1955, several years after Noonan, and like many of that age, my first “news-event” memory was the Cuban Missile Crisis, surreptitiously eavesdropping on my parents gravely discussing it. Next was JFK’s assassination, followed two days later, after church, seeing Lee Harvey Oswald executed by Jack Ruby, live on Meet the Press. And then Malcolm X, MLK, Bobby Kennedy, the Black Panthers, Kent State and the Weathermen. Noonan says: “The assassinations of the 1960s took place in a healthier country, one that respected itself more and was, for all its troubles, more at ease with itself… Now political violence feels like something we do, which is a painful thought.”
Please: “we” don’t engage in “political violence;" a minuscule number of people do.
The only thing “healthier” in the 1960s and 70s, in my estimation, was popular culture and relaxed social mores; otherwise, the economy was bad (especially after LBJ and Nixon poured billions into an unpopular war) and the “generation gap” pitted old against young, often with ominous results.
As for the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, and all the media attention about him (and the idiotic FBI Director Kash Patel’s social media posting “details” of the criminal investigation) I’ll withhold judgment. It’s fishy, just like Thomas Matthew Crooks in Butler, PA over a year ago, and would it surprise anyone if Robinson is just another patsy? The Journal’s Allysia Finley took the story at face value in her Sept. 14th column “Tyler Robinson and America’s Lost Boys.” She wrote, sternly: “Lost boys pose a broader cultural problem… Too many young men spend their days playing videogames, watching porn, smoking pot and trolling the internet rather than engaging with the real world. Mr. Kirk sought to bring young people like Mr. Robinson out of their virtual caves. It’s harder to hate someone you meet in the flesh than an avatar in a digital dystopia.”
And with that “breaking news” about young males, Judge Finley has declared Tyler Robinson guilty. Maybe he is, maybe not, but it’s too early to say, despite the media’s breathless speculation and Kash Patel’s imitation of Lenny Briscoe.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023