Thread by @mjs_DC

I've been thinking a lot about this strange diss of Pete Buttigieg because it perfectly illustrates horseshoe theory—although its critique is ostensibly progressive, large chunks of the article would fit comfortable in the Federalist or American Greatness. nytimes.com/2019/04/24/mag…

The writer dismisses skills that American liberals typically praise—the ability to speak more than one language, to play a musical instrument, to chat knowledgeably about classic literature—as "meaningless erudition."

This is mere "internetty intelligence," we are told.

I find this analysis quite shallow and, frankly, hard to understand. But I think I get the point: Knowledge of multiple language, of music, of literature, is "meaningless" because it merely appeals to the media's "fetishes." These skills are a "whimsical surplus achievement."

These skills are also routinely dismissed by conservatives as gratuitous and overrated—think of Republican efforts to cut humanities funding for public schools and colleges; of the nativist hostility to multilingualism; of anti-elite suspicion of avant-garde art and literature.

It's fascinating to see a liberal New York Times writer dismiss multilingualism, musical ability, and familiarity with literature as "idiosyncratic talents" that merely reflect the "dilettantish longing of the upper middle class." That's a longstanding *conservative* critique.

And whatever your views of that critique, it's interesting to see liberal and conservative anti-elitism merge here—to see a liberal writer condemn Pete's language, music, and cultural knowledge as a "grab bag of gifted-and-talented party tricks."

I'll add that there is a bud of righteous media criticism in the piece, but I'm not sure it blossoms into coherence. What the writer intends to be a critique of *the media's fixation* on Pete's skills quickly collapses into a direct repudiation of Pete's skills.

I see some of you think the article is intended as a media critique, and perhaps it is, but the writer jettisons that lens to engage in a straightforward diss of Pete. It isn't just that the media is too fixated on his skills, but that those skills are normatively meaningless.

Anyway, this article is one of the most surprising New York Times opinion pieces I've read in a while, and I suspect it will cheer some folks on the right who've been saying a version of this stuff for decades. The end. nytimes.com/2019/04/24/mag…

OK, one postscript: I find it surprising that the author does not consider the *reason* why Pete might have so many skills—specifically, the possibility that, as a closeted gay boy in the Midwest, he might have had "best little boy in the world" syndrome. nytimes.com/2013/05/07/opi…