I read the first few paragraphs of the article and felt stirred up to make fun of it, but then I stopped myself. This morning, I'm seeing a Legal Insurrection article by Mike LaChance that reflects the sort of mockery I nearly fell into: "Wired Magazine Gets Roasted for Cringeworthy Puff Piece on Pete Buttigieg/'he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideas about three mighty themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—intelligible to me.'"With a remarkable blend of intellect and empathy, Pete Buttigieg brings a fresh perspective to the forefront of public discourse. https://t.co/mzbXgnvkSv
— WIRED (@WIRED) May 18, 2023
📷: Argus Paul Estabrook pic.twitter.com/KzI3qKrIA2
The curious mind of Pete Buttigieg holds much of its functionality in reserve. Even as he discusses railroads and airlines, down to the pointillist data that is his current stock-in-trade, the US secretary of transportation comes off like a Mensa black card holder who might have a secret Go habit or a three-second Rubik’s Cube solution or a knack for supplying, off the top of his head, the day of the week for a random date in 1404, along with a non-condescending history of the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
As Secretary Buttigieg and I talked in his underfurnished corner office one afternoon in early spring, I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers. Other mental facilities, no kidding, are apportioned to the Iliad, Puritan historiography, and Knausgaard’s Spring—though not in the original Norwegian (slacker). Fortunately, he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideas about three mighty themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—intelligible to me....
This writing is not out of control. It's elegant and specific and she's not fawning over Buttigieg. She's having great fun... for our sake, for us, the readers. Those who are roasting her and cringing on her behalf are either stuck in their own partisan box or pointlessly bound by convention. It's fine that this sort of mockery goes on to keep most writers from going over the top, because most writers are bad and it really is best for them to rein themselves in. But when an excellent writer breaks free, I don't want to find myself among the prigs who say oh, no, she shouldn't have done that!
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109 comments:
Mockery is great and all, but why is it important to care about the person punching you in the face?
(Yes, yes, Democrats have made this part of their business model).
Anyone know where we can find a guy whose backwoods-chapel mind is filled with English-language information about hotbox detectors and NOTAM systems?
So Team Butti has the vig to find an actual writer- whee! Last time 'round Team Butti has the vig to get Annie Leibovitz to document his historic climb to The White House, where he couldn't beat the ghoulish corrupt basement dweller or even outlast Bernie Sanders and Tom Steyer.
Whee!
"Mockery is great and all, but why is it important to care about the person punching you in the face?"
This post isn't about caring about anyone. It's about reading with understanding and delight: "I don't want to find myself among the prigs."
I haven't read the article, and I don't have strong opinions about Pete Buttigieg. But I do have strong opinions about Tom Wolfe, and to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, Virginia Heffernan is no Tom Wolfe. Assuming that the rest of the article is like these paragraphs, I would point out two important differences.
First, Wolfe uses his over-the-top style to give readers a glimpse at an interesting world (Car culture! Hippies! Astronauts!), which they otherwise might not know about. In my opinion, using this style to puff up a current political figure does come off as cringe and fawning.
Second, Wolfe's over-the-top style is based on keen observation. Wolfe presents a particular lens through which to view his subject, and then he examines a million specific details under that lens. This article does the opposite. Heffernan presents one generic detail about Pete Buttigieg (he's smart), and then she herself creates a million specific images (Rubik's cubes and Julian calendars and so forth) to illustrate that one observed detail. Personally, I find Heffernan's approach inferior, because while I might care to learn details about Pete Buttigieg, I have no interest at all in Heffernan's imaginings.
Great writing? No.
His mind has apses. Is that good?
there is not sufficient mockery, that can heaped on hefferman, who elevatss a total disaster to our transportation system,
I could see the argument for greatness if it were a sort-of rope-a-dope way of highlighting just how bad Buttigieg is at his job. A modern day A Modest Proposal. There needs to be a subtext of “the pointy-headed intellectual is so enamoured of his own brilliance that he can’t handle anything practical.”
To escape shameless hagiography status, it needs to do more than just use creative imagery. It needs to be a stealth hit piece. I don’t get the sense that Heffernan did that.
The Democrat party is the mob. The media is pravda.
Not hard.
It's that fake-maple corn-syrup based syrup.
Sounds like a lot of name dropping to me. Is there any content?
The curious mind of Pete Buttigieg stubbornly holds much of its functionality in reserve. This is often frustrating for President Biden's ambitious young transportation secretary who's tenure so far has been plagued with catastrophes a more cooperative brain might have helped him to foresee and prevent.
The organ's aggravating recalcitrance also creates an enormous storage problem. What do you do with all that left over functionality anyway? Fortunately, Buttigieg has a cathedral-sized barn of a hippocampus. He's been piling the stuff there in a horse's apse for years.
I read the excerpt you supply as being an example of “one narcissist wasting her art to portray another narcissist wasting himself in misapplying the power entrusted to him.” If Buttegieg were a private citizen, some of us might enjoy the play of his mind as described by this writer as she indulges hers. But he isn’t a private citizen: he’s a #%! Cabinet Secretary and we are forced to pay him and obey him as he performs his duties: which he has manifestly failed to do. The only article that should be written about him is his performance review. With not one metaphor, not one spare adjective. A review that demands that he account for his gross incompetence, that asks him why we should not interpret his action and inaction in office as deliberate and systematic malfeasance requiring his summary dismissal. “Cathedrals of the mind,” indeed.
Easily your best post in a month, maybe even a month of Sundays.
You nailed it.
You can make the case that it is well written. I doubt you can make the case that it is true.
I know Mike LaChance, he used to live in Somerville. I asked ChatGPT if the quoted passage by Virginia Heffernan was great writing, and here was the response:
The passage you provided showcases a strong command of language and employs vivid imagery to describe Pete Buttigieg and his intellectual capabilities. The use of phrases like "Mensa black card holder," "secret Go habit," and "knack for supplying" adds depth to the portrayal of his character. The mention of specific details like the Julian and Gregorian calendars and references to literature demonstrate a breadth of knowledge.
The writing style is engaging and has a touch of playfulness, evident in phrases such as "non-condescending history" and the parenthetical remark about Knausgaard's Spring. The author's interaction with Secretary Buttigieg and the exploration of three themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—add substance to the passage.
Overall, the writing appears to be well-crafted, intriguing, and showcases creativity in its description of the subject. It successfully captures the reader's attention and invites further exploration of the ideas presented.
The meaning of "comes off like" is: "isn't really, but acts as if."
"Other mental facilities, no kidding, are apportioned to..." Pete is in a position controlling government-led success or failure of transportation in the US. Sure, he can enjoy his studies of non-Transport issues and show off with them. But that isn't doing his actualjob, now is it? And he isn't doing his job very well, is he?
But when an excellent writer breaks free, I don't want to find myself among the prigs who say oh, no, she shouldn't have done that!
Not to worry, you will never be mistaken as part of the tribe with the rest of us prigs...
It reads like crap to me.
I get the same effect from bad phenomenology, say Luce Irigaray writing in the style of Emmanuel Levinas but not getting anything right.
The parenthetical "slacker" undermines the case that this is well-written. It stops the flow of all the adjectives and images to insert the author's opinion/irony. It's a quirk that a good writer would've resisted, knowing that it changes the tone.
From the article:
"The curious mind of Pete Buttigieg holds much of its functionality in reserve. Even as he discusses railroads and airlines, down to the pointillist data that is his current stock-in-trade, the US secretary of transportation comes off like...
'comes off like' ≠ 'is.'
"...a Mensa black card holder who might have a secret Go habit or a three-second Rubik’s Cube solution or a knack for supplying, off the top of his head, the day of the week for a random date in 1404, along with a non-condescending history of the Julian and Gregorian calendars."
...none of which proves his ability to handle his assigned duties with competence.
Ann Althouse said...
"This post isn't about caring about anyone. It's about reading with understanding and delight: "I don't want to find myself among the prigs."
The quotes from the article remind me of what Debussy said about Grieg: "one has in the mouth the bizarre and delightful taste of a pink bonbon that could be filled with snow." Debussy was wrong about Grieg, but the quote applied to this article is apt.
I guess the temptation to troll your readers from time to time is just too much.
If she had added "/s" at the end,that would have made it great writing.
Off topic, but have those ships finally docked at the ports yet?
Who will succeed Joe Biden? The battle lines are being drawn. Kamala Harris is in one corner and Pete Buttigieg in the other. The emphasis on Buttigieg's intellect is an obvious attack on Harris's chief weakness.
NOW I will read it. Thanks, Althouse.
Someone should say that it appears that Mayor Pete's great intellect is ill served by transporting people and things. His apse is large and contains multitudes, but there is no room in that space for these more practical considerations.
What's actually IN there?
I sure wish we still had Leon Varjian around to help us speculate on this.
I am sure I've read this sort of intellectual hagiography before. With Obama. With Hillary. Many others. It's a rite of spring with our media. Their schoolbook brilliance is fine and wonderful and might be of use at (name your elite university). It's a mess when a person like this is put into a cabinet position with no goal other than his or her own self promotion. Pete knows nothing about Transportation- or...at least he didn't. I'm sure he does now. And I'm sure he's counting the days until he can get into something bigger, better, more befitting a man of his intellectual heft. (One can only imagine how he ground through his days as South Bend Mayor, with so much running in his head.)
I read the article and thought, at first, it was satire. But it was real. Nothing has changed in the minds of our left-run journals. Lefties are brilliant and should be running all things right down to deciding who lives, dies, and what gender they will be. Righties are dumb thumb-suckers who should be grateful there are Lefties around to explain why the sun comes up in the east and to tell them what they can do with the money they are allowed to keep, and what to eat.
Nothing new here.
LA Times is my hometown paper, so I can state without fear of contradiction that Virginia is neither an elegant writer nor a writer who can be trusted to do anything other than tongue bathe those she admires and piss on anyone she doesn't, a skill that requires a great deal of lying by commission and omission.
"facilities" or faculties?
I'm baffled by this post. Obviously she's fawning. She's describing a bureaucrat with a really bad track record as some sort of transcendent genius, far above the rest of us. Heffernan's florid imagery isn't elevated writing; rather, it just shows off that she's trying. so. hard.
I suppose a case could be made that Heffernan is cleverly trying to destroy his career. Nothing about this article makes him more interesting; she just makes him seem weird and inaccessible. What Buttigieg needs to repair his image, politically, is to be portrayed as practical and competent. This embarrassing depiction as Kid Super-Genius just makes him more toxic.
I read that interview yesterday and called it a puff piece then. But it is more than a puff piece. Some might call it a blow job. But not me notwithstanding my history with Pete.
Putting aside the absurd and over-the-top writing style, that so-called interview perfectly illustrates how the Press constantly sucks up to this guy. He’s never once been challenged. Like the Bidens and Clintons, he’s immune.
Yes, Pete has a high IQ but he has been a complete and objective failure in his last two political jobs. As Mayor of the tiny college town of South Bend, crime was out of control. As I recall, top 5 or 10. He was also called Pothole Pete.
In his current job, he’s in charge of trains, planes and automobiles. Disaster train wreck in Ohio. SW Airlines had a major computer failure. Repeated systematic airline delays. Canceled flights. Our seaports were also jammed. Supply chain delayed. Historic.
But this Mensa-McKinsey-Rhodes Scholar genius missed all of this. He’s a complete fuck up!
A McKinsey person is supposed to see these problems in advance and fix them.
I had the displeasure of being adverse two Omaha Mensa lawyers the past year and I kicked both of their asses. Being a Mensa doesn’t mean shit if you don’t act, solve the problem and win. Pete reacted after the fact and then didn’t fix the problems.
The worst of that story was how Pete bragged about his E Mustang. How macho! But this guy is so clueless that he doesn’t appreciate the fact that his virtue signaling EV is very expensive, subsidized by federal tax credits, runs on coal and the cobalt was probably mined by little Black boys in the Congo who should be in school.
The only negative (?) in that piece is that the reader learns that his dad was a major American Marxist. But maybe that’s a feature and not a bug for Wired readers.
Pete wrongly called me a racist, but at least I didn’t fail in my jobs as Mayor and Secretary of Transportation. But Pete thinks he is doing a heck of a job.
He's Gay! He likes electric Mustangs! He likes beer! He likes God!
YAY!
“I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers.”
What a laughably stupid thing to say. He can do his job with half his brain tied behind his back! In an executive job you do the critical, then you do the necessary, then you do the needed then you build for the future. If he has so much spare time why is he not helping his staff solve train wrecks, why is he not talking with experts about how to improve airport safety. After that he can go around his department and support his people in person.
This is a description of a dilettante. He learned nothing from his short time at McKinsey. If he believes this about himself he should be fired.
Yes I want a president who is so smart he can work 2 days a week and then go to the beach.
She was interviewing the worst cabinet secretary since Hillary Clinton was in charge of the State Department. If he is as smart as she tries to suggest then the question is what good intelligence is if it isn’t applied to solving real problems? Like asking why the FAA allowed Boeing to put software on the 737-MAX that could cause it to take control away from the pilots and fly the plane straight into the ground. Or asking how a train could contain 20 tank cars filled with hazardous or inflammable materials without having to operate under the rules for trains hauling hazardous cargo.
In my life experience, and I’ll shortly be 77, the world is chock full of talented, intelligent people who are failures at what they do. And I’m not writing about talented, high-functioning autistic people (software development attracts a fair number of these) whose autism prevents them from working well in teams. Buttigieg is just another example of someone who takes a job because of pay and perks and prestige, but who doesn’t really want to actually do the job.
If I didn't know better, I'd say Buttigieg was posturing to get laid during that interview.
It is possible that the writer was writing satirically, but you should examine the writer's other work if you really want to figure it out.
The mind may have apses, but it belongs to a nave.
It's hard to accept panegyric as great writing, at least in the modern day -- I think the window for that in the West closed around, oh, 1918, or maybe 1945 at the latest depending on where you happen to live.
What would have elevated the writing here would, I think, have been for the writer to slip in the point many of her critics have made, viz. that Buttigieg has been a remarkably ineffectual Transport Muggins so far, so, ah, maybe he should be devoting a bit more brainpower to his actual job. Then the fawning rhetoric might connect with an actual rhetorical purpose -- to heighten the contrast between the politician's self-image and the grubby reality of NOTAM outages, train derailments, and cascading flight cancellations. Flattery of the powerful serves a purpose, sure, and it can be artfully done, after its fashion, just like Hallmark cards and advertising copy, but I would hesitate to praise it as good writing.
In fairness, I didn't pay to unlock so maybe she slides the shiv in at the end. But from what I could see before the paywall it's just some mildly arch fluff ("slacker") about how terribly erudite Buttigieg is and then some gentle, unchallenging questions.
Great writing or not, the subject is unworthy of the words. Call it fiction and you would have a much better argument about how good the writing may be.
He was artfully positioned to do a spectacularly horrible job of a task ,that had he done nothing, he'd have been a success.
Again. For the Nteenth time. Why does the left vigorously pursue mediocrity?
This is Althouse. The article is about a homosexual man. Therefore, the positive must be accentuated.
Maybe it's a parody. I think the author may be imitating the way Buttigieg talks. Buttigieg is something of an intellectual bully.
No amount of BS is going to help Buttigieg now. Sorry, but this loser won't be the first gay/non binary president. Buttigieg had a relatively modest Cabinet role that he turned into a political albatross for the Democratic Party. Disaster after disaster after disaster. This man is an incompetent, lazy prick.
She didn't mention his mental facilities that are quietly apportioned to advancing Gramscian theory.
Pete's father was a translator and editor of the three-volume English edition of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and influenced his pursuit of literature in college. Pete assisted his father in his Gramscian work.
Gramsci, not your average Marxist, advanced the concept of the "long march through institutions," the idea that achieving a Marxist society is best accomplished through institutional capture, including Education, Entertainment, Journalism, Unions (including Public Sector), the Administrative State, Libraries, etc.
This may sound familiar, because it is happening now. Whoopie! You go, Pete!
For example, there is this from last month in The Atlantic
Of course, that could also be "great writing" in the vein of Tom Wolfe, especially given the date of publication. However, you can also read her Twitter feed.
So, my conclusion is that the Buttuvwxyz piece by Heffernan were her authentic thoughts about the Transportation Secretary, and not some sly take down (it would have been a brilliant mockery of the man, I admit).
The people hyping Buttigieg are the same people who want you to eat insects for dinner.
You can't spell bug without Buttigieg.
..the US secretary of transportation comes off like a Mensa black card holder ..
i've Yet to see any indication that Mayor Pete has a three digit IQ.
He seems the Definition of an average kid, raised by a marxist professor.
Any shimmers of greatness that anyone has detected and want to share?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
"No amount of BS is going to help Buttigieg now. Sorry, but this loser won't be the first gay/non binary president. Buttigieg had a relatively modest Cabinet role that he turned into a political albatross for the Democratic Party. Disaster after disaster after disaster. This man is an incompetent, lazy prick."
Joe Biden is literally the dumbest fuck to ever hold the office of President- a man that couldn't have managed a lemonade stand in his best days. He couldn't win a single primary in three presidential runs until the Democratic Party leadership decided to literally install him as the nominee. Sorry, Spriros, but competence has nothing to do with getting elected President as a Democrat. If they want Buttuvwxyz as the nominee and the President, the Democratic Party will make it so.
Oso Negro: "This is Althouse. The article is about a homosexual man. Therefore, the positive must be accentuated."
Its much more than accentuating the positive.
As the media did with obama, the author of this article seeks to turn But-ggigjg(more letters) into a god.
Next will be the serial magazine covers and photos always with a halo effect around Pete's face.
Oso Negro: "This is Althouse. The article is about a homosexual man. Therefore, the positive must be accentuated."
Its much more than accentuating the positive.
As the media did with obama, the author of this article seeks to turn But-ggigjg(more letters) into a god.
Next will be the serial magazine covers and photos always with a halo effect around Pete's face.
Is it about the writing or about falsely picturing an inadequate policy maker as a rock star?
Question: "Was Virginia Heffernan's Wired article about Pete Buttigieg badly written?"
Answer: Indisputably
Side Comment: As one commenter noted upthread, Althouse's take on the question could merely be her desire from time to time to troll the commentariat. On the other hand, again as noted upthread, the subject of Ms. Heffernan's hagiography of Mr. Buttcheeks is a homosexual left-wing politician. Such subject matter seems to be of continual interest to and support of Ms. Althouse, so there's the distinct possibility she is serious and not trolling. The only really clear element of her post is her stated unwillingness to be associated with "prigs", an undefined term that may be her shorthand for "deplorables".
Others have brought similar themes up, but what bothers me is the fact that she alludes to his capabilities thought her estimation of his apparent mental faculties. Starts with "Comes off like" and then drops ideas that she herself imagined, rather than his own actual skills. I qualify as a black card Mensa. It's nice, I suppose, but what have I done for you lately? I can tell you. No one in my circle of friends care one whit about my Rubik's prowess (I am good, but not competition capable,) and no one at Althouse cares either for that matter. And that is the point. What has the Secretary done for us lately? If he is filling his cathedral up with all this great stuff, appropriate for a college professor, does he have the discipline and ability to actually manage the job he is in? I don't care how much extra space in his cathedral mind, I care if he has practical ability to achieve. So, what is missing is her assessment of his skill at his job WHILE still filling it up with cool, but irrelevant musings. He sucks at his paid vocation, but at least he is amazing with Kierkegaard (though not in the original Norwegian, the slacker.)
She is fawning over him and eliding* the most important attribute that is relevant today: His ability to do what he is paid to do.
*I did not read the whole article, maybe it's in there. So then I have egg on my face.
Not fawning? JFC!
Had she been a he, Mayor Pete would have gotten his cock sucked that day...
Rest assured, Mayor Pete is not the smartest person in the room.
I've been around actual smart people my entire career, and he isn't even in the same universe...
Intent doesn't matter, in this case. If you read this thing, read it like a Tom Wolfe treatment of a college paper version of an interview of the great man by some smitten college intern type, and enjoy it fully through that lens. Wolfe wrote that rather uncomfortable college novel too, you know.
Through that lens, it's not just bad writing - it's great bad writing. To me, the humor is unintentional but so very real. Those who think this actually serves Buttigieg and "builds his brand" deserve to have their lives run by people like Buttigieg.
"He's so smart! So what if nothing works, he's playing the longer more important game. One more sophisticated than anything that will compress into your lifespan." *eyeroll*
Kamala Harris is in one corner and Pete Buttigieg in the other. The emphasis on Buttigieg's intellect is an obvious attack on Harris's chief weakness.
Despite his so very special gayness and intellect, Mayor Pete will be taunted as a racist if he runs directly against Kamala.
Pete is a terrific case of the "credentialed" life winners who have no real skills except the ability to bullshit people.
.
Again. For the Nteenth time. Why does the left vigorously pursue mediocrity?
Mayor Buttplug is in the mainstream of Democrat incompetence. Look at Chicago and Minneapolis for examples of what he is seeking or all of us.
I agree with baghdadbob about where he learned mediocrity.
Sounds like someone got hold of a teen girl’s diary entry and published it.
"...Was Virginia Heffernan's Wired article about Pete Buttigieg badly written?..."
AA-that's an interesting question? But with all due respect, "badly written" is the last question I would query!
The theme of Heffernan's Wired article is the 'over the top' fawning about Secretary of Transportation's (Pete Buttigieg) so-called 'Intellectual Prowess'. Hefferman's inability to reconcile 'Intellect with Competence' is a telling flaw in her article. All of the vast press written about Buttigieg has one thing missing - his lack of competence at his current position. Not one word from Hefferman cites Buttigieg's accomplishments at the Transportation Department.
'A Coconut in the hand is better than a Coconut in the head.'
"I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers."
How could anyone write that with a straight face? The people of East Palestine could have used a little more Buttgig's "Cognitive powers" applied to their problems.
BTW, whenever a liberal/left Journo starts talking about how "smart" someone is, instead of how well they do their job, look out!
“Did I miss my chance to get in on the early mockery action or was I right to stop myself — because this thing might be brilliant writing? Is this something in the Hunter S. Thompson/Tom Wolfe tradition?”
Hahaha no. Mock away.
For reasons better left unexamined, this thread has motivated me to seek out Percy Dovetonsils on Youtube.
This is the guy that thinks we should all buy an EV for $40-$50k so we don’t have to worry about fluctuating gas prices. No discussion of fluctuating electricity prices due to poor grid supply and management. There are some significant gaps in his apses.
I'm baffled by this post too. Instead of discussing actual policies and things he has accomplished, or plans to, Heffernan offers Buttigeig a truly bombastic whopper of a blow job, then pretends his musings about neoliberalism are something unique, not the same thin gruel churned out toenail-deep in a thousand think tank papers, TED talks, and New Republic articles.
Then the interview gets weird.
Buttigeig says nothing of substance about transportation. He just starts mocking people and wishing them ill. He insults masculinity as Republican, regressive, and racist while puffing about the superior torque of his pickup truck. He gleefully paints a dark image of political rivals shunned from society and employment itself, and Putin, Putin, Putin, racism, homophobia, racism, eat fake meat or else.
MSNBC is a portrait of subtlety compared to this.
Why does our transportation cabinet minister's commentary read like a coma patient performing a Hitler skit? This is not a man bathing in gravitas: it's a boy-child seething with hatred and deep condescension for half of America, a hatred so deeply marbled that he cannot conceive of engaging an opposing viewpoint, let alone stoop to presenting anything befitting his actual job.
And his insults don't demonstrate anything like intellect either. They're breathtakingly adolescent and laser-focused at the crotches of others. Bitchy is not a good look, but it's also not, in this case, a slur: he is bitchy.
This is a person who not only believes Republicans would rather starve themselves and their families than see blacks succeed, but he says such things out loud.
We're not paying him to contemplate The Iliad or purportedly use just a sliver of his intellect. That's what graduate school is for. Luckily, we're not paying Virginia Heffernan at all. Her "playful" writing can't conceal her subject's deeply disturbing, sexually obsessive and fascistic reboots. The id of stale Stalinism wafts over his bland word-vegetable burger.
I couldn't care less about the quality of the writing if the thinking is this bad
among people in power and so-called journalists have to reapply their lipstick after leaving the room. I care that some failed mayor of Palookaville is calling me a racist Putin acolyte who doesn't deserve to make a living and feed my family in his unicorn electric truck fantasyland.
"I sure wish we still had Leon Varjian around to help us speculate on this." You're not alone Mezzrow.
From this article I learned the word “pulchritudinous”.
I’m surprised our Professor didn’t mention this.
Can he make the trains run on time?
John Henry
This article is great prose if you are unaware that Buttigieg's current purview is the trains that have been derailing and the West Coast ports that have dozens of anchored boats stuck waiting to deliver goods.
But the following phrase delivers such a resounding gong of cognitive dissonance the people at the other side of the diner looked at me askance.
"...I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers."
Bravo, Tina Trent.
I'm baffled by this post too. Instead of discussing actual policies and things he has accomplished, or plans to, Heffernan offers Buttigeig a truly bombastic whopper of a blow job, then pretends his musings about neoliberalism are something unique, not the same thin gruel churned out toenail-deep in a thousand think tank papers, TED talks, and New Republic articles.
Then the interview gets weird.
Buttigeig says nothing of substance about transportation. He just starts mocking people and wishing them ill. He insults masculinity as Republican, regressive, and racist while puffing about the superior torque of his pickup truck. He gleefully paints a dark image of political rivals shunned from society and employment itself, and Putin, Putin, Putin, racism, homophobia, racism, eat fake meat or else.
MSNBC is a portrait of subtlety compared to this.
Why does our transportation cabinet minister's commentary read like a coma patient performing a Hitler skit? This is not a man bathing in gravitas: it's a boy-child seething with hatred and deep condescension for half of America, a hatred so deeply marbled that he cannot conceive of engaging an opposing viewpoint, let alone stoop to presenting anything befitting his actual job.
And his insults don't demonstrate anything like intellect either. They're breathtakingly adolescent and laser-focused at the crotches of others. Bitchy is not a good look, but it's also not, in this case, a slur: he is bitchy.
This is a person who not only believes Republicans would rather starve themselves and their families than see blacks succeed, but he says such things out loud.
We're not paying him to contemplate The Iliad or purportedly use just a sliver of his intellect. That's what graduate school is for. Luckily, we're not paying Virginia Heffernan at all. Her "playful" writing can't conceal her subject's deeply disturbing, sexually obsessive and fascistic reboots. The id of stale Stalinism wafts over his bland word-vegetable burger.
I couldn't care less about the quality of the writing if the thinking is this bad
among people in power and so-called journalists have to reapply their lipstick after leaving the room. I care that some failed mayor of Palookaville is calling me a racist Putin acolyte who doesn't deserve to make a living and feed my family in his unicorn electric truck fantasyland.
And perhaps, Althouse, you would care, if it was your face being punched and your pension being threatened.
Interesting, very slightly related, thought. Nearly all of the Founding Fathers had not just read The Illiad, but had done so in the original Greek. It was a standard component of what it meant to be college-educated 250 years ago.
Charles Cooke from NRO had a go at the article as well:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/05/i-love-pete-buttigieg/
do i HAVE to be, the 1st to point out;
that Mayor Buttifuc's main goal in life is to take a load up his apse?
"He insults masculinity as Republican, regressive, and racist while puffing about the superior torque of his pickup truck. "
Actually,
"The vehicle I get around DC in is a Mustang Mach-E. The fact that Ford made one of their first electric vehicles a Mustang is probably not an accident. It has three modes. Whisper, Engage, and Unbridled. There are propulsion sound effects involved in the different modes to help you feel conscious of the power of the engine."
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Very meta...
This reads like she's roasting Buttigieg.
Tina Trent, glorious post.
The author's writing is elegant and hagiographic. The accompanying photo is ethereal, otherworldly, as if Buttigieg is an apparition from another realm, come down to bless us.
The article is mostly an interview with Buttigieg. I wouldn't say his mind is a 'cathedral mind.' It's more a swirling dust devil of ideas: masculinity is bad, Republicans are evil, but we Democrats are righteously caring for 'the least of these,' as Jesus taught.
The article has a link to a map showing the infrastructure projects around the country. Two of our local school districts have received grants to upgrade their old diesel buses to electric or propane powered school buses.
Tina at 11:42 is a much superior writer.
"Buttigieg, whose father was a renowned Marxist scholar, was himself a devotee of Senator Bernie Sanders as a young man. He now recognizes that the persistence of far-right ideology, with its masculinist and antidemocratic preoccupations, is part of the reason that neoliberalism has come undone. Not everyone, it seems, even wants a rising standard of living if it means they have to accept the greater enfranchisement of undesirables, including, of course, women, poor people, Black people, and the usual demons in the sights of the world’s Ted Cruzes and Tucker Carlsons.
He also talked about his faith. Lefties these days are said to be less religious than right-wing evangelicals, but between Buttigieg, whose Episcopalianism grounds his decisionmaking, and his boss, President Joe Biden, whose robust Catholicism drives his sincere effort to revive America’s soul, perhaps a religious left is rising again."
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Waca waca!!
Interview
VH: Was there, maybe, a comeback of a pared-down version of neoliberalism—or at least the hope that markets and democracy might work in sync—when Ted Cruz coined “Woke Coke” to show contempt for Coca-Cola’s protest of voter suppression in Georgia?
PB: Well, yes, there’s something delicious about the way that Cruz and the rest of them have positioned themselves on one side of the fence. And Netflix, Coca-Cola, Disney, and Bud Light are on the other side. Along with most of America.
There may in fact be a center of gravity in this country that includes both a Democratic majority of the American people, and even something of a consensus, at least among mainstream business leaders. We have certain commitments around democracy and inclusion that are really elemental to the whole system.
VH: True. But the right likes to dismiss any political action—even in the name of elemental American ideals—as pretense or virtue-signaling. I think of the time Putin defined the Kremlin’s enemy as foie gras, oysters, and “gender freedoms.” An American conservative might hear him and say, OK, foie gras, pronouns—annoying, pretentious, sure. But do Republicans really want to be dragged into a bigger far-right project, including the renunciation of democracy, modernity, civil rights, human rights?
PB: Look, the mainstream right’s political project was twofold. It was to prevent legal access to abortion and to sustain lower taxes for the wealthy. Those are kind of the two greatest pillars of the mainstream right now. They’re now the dog that caught the car. And, to switch metaphors, they rode a tiger to get there. They made a lot of distasteful bargains in order to get there.
Sometimes the military—the military, of all institutions—comes under attack from the far right. On ideological grounds. Yet another front in the culture war.
VH: The woke Pentagon.
PB: You could add that to the list: Bud Light, Coke, football, Disney … and the Army. You can only put yourself on the wrong side of so many red, white, and blue American institutions, and the question becomes, Is this about you?"
<
VH: I don’t know if you’ll remotely agree with me, but I’ve come to consider January 6 as a triumph of something like drudgery—or at least of the mundane. Even after terrible violence, destruction, and bloodshed came to the US Capitol, Congress returned to carry out its clerical workday. The paperwork got filed. The flag of the ordinary was still there.
PB: Yeah, I agree there’s something that bears more attention about how Congress stayed, came back, finished the job. That’s real. And the fact that the Republic held is real. And another under-remarked fact is the courts did a good job of surfacing what was true and what was false. Because in the US court of law there are actual consequences to lying, and you have to actually present evidence in favor of your client, so it turns out to be less susceptible to the warping of reality. "
Precise language avoided East Palestine or racist highways.
@stutefish: Certainly, if I ever wrote anything like that, it would be because I wished to be understood to be roasting my subject.
Is this something in the Hunter S. Thompson/Tom Wolfe tradition?
Fun game: who else can we imagine having written such prose to good effect? Kafka? O'Rourke?
Who has said, priggishly, "oh, no, she shouldn't have done that"?
So far, the interpretations differ over issues of authorial intent and the quality of the prose; nobody here has objected to the notion that she MIGHT be mocking him. Most of us find him eminently mockable, if not actually detestable.
On Twitter, I told Virgina to check out the comments here on the Althouse blog. She blocked me.
I guess she doesn't take criticism well.
What Ken said.
Yes I want a president who is so smart he can work 2 days a week and then go to the beach.
I'm afraid we've got one. I didn't read the article but "Wired" used to be a serious thing. It was Wired that published this article.
Maybe some lefty billionaire bought it like Drudge.
Biden's secretary of trans/portation, of the two men and a womb Buttigiegs. Misogynists for social progress?
Poof Buttijig needs ridicule. He has ZERO self-awareness.
The people of East Palestine could have used a little more Buttgig's "Cognitive powers" applied to their problems.
Valley of the deplorables.
Cooke of National Review slipped in this fine observation: "Buttigieg, who is white but makes up for it by being gay..." Yahtzee!
It is absurd to blame the transportation Secretary for plane delays and railroad disasters. It would be useful for him to use his mighty intellect to push back on idiotic knee jerk reactions like making airlines accountable for weather events and ignoring technological advances in rail transport to insist on over staffing trains, as if two engineers can stop a derailment caused by crap tracks.
He seems a nice fellow who should be in academia at a northeastern prep school.
"As Secretary Buttigieg and I talked in his underfurnished corner office one afternoon in early spring, I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers."
A friend of mine is among the most senior-ranked career civil servants (i.e., not a political appointee) in DOT and is a very liberal Democrat. This person was thrilled when Secretary Buttigieg was appointed and meets periodically with him. My anonymous friend's reaction to the article:
"If only he actually applied a modest portion of his cognitive powers to his cabinet job! His mind usually seems somewhere else. We expect Republican secretaries not to care about DOT. He's better than the worst of those, but we had such high hopes."
Yeah, it's an anonymous take on things, so take it with a grain of salt.
yes, neoliberal, machoism, the Christ people, sure. But where is Buttigieg's mind when it comes to the Grateful Dead?
PS. Buttigieg was a History and English major at Harvard. He almost certainly read The Iliad, or a least a chunk of it, during his Freshman year. I'm sure a lot of people who did that are able to drop an Iliad reference or two decades later without digging too deeply. I'd wager that even Heffernan (English Lit PhD, Harvard) can do it. There are reasons why it's considered a classic.
Here's HST's idea of mockery:
If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.
Hunter Thompson was as subtle as sledgehammer.
Wired has been thoroughly skinsuited for awhile now.
Jim Howard,
I'm afraid that the first time I heard "pulchritudinous" actually used out loud was in a Berkeley Opera production (heavily redacted, needless to say) of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio. But don't mind; you aren't missing much. The word exists to be deployed only in circumstances such as postmodern opera productions and political puff pieces.
Althouse, are you that afraid of being thought a prig? Really? Then I should say that Step 1 is not letting on to all and sundry that you fear being thought a prig. But, really! Do you lie awake in terror at night that you might have accidentally dissed the next Bonfire of the Vanities? There are very few occasions indeed to say this, but: The world really, really doesn't revolve around yourself. Step back a bit and contemplate the difference in scale between yourself and the universe.
And Virginia Heffernan is not now, and never will be, Tom Wolfe. Rest easy.
I was going to make a comment about the functionally inept subject of this possibly well written material but that's been well covered already.
Instead, I'll comment directly to the commenters who noted the possibility that it's actually written to ridicule or mock said subject. Remember, that would require some element of humor, and we all know that humor was murdered by the Progressive movement and whatever you are thinking is not funny. Carry on.
nixon was entirely too soft, for these bastards, he challenged the deep state's arrangements, that's why they forced him out,
plus I don't think hunter ever lavished praise on a politician, maybe clinton in 1992, but he was kind of meh about mcgovern
wolfe on the other hand did praise when merited,
Blogger Biff said...
"PS. Buttigieg was a History and English major at Harvard. He almost certainly read The Iliad, or a least a chunk of it, during his Freshman year."
The Iliad is my bathroom reading.
"It is absurd to blame the transportation Secretary for plane delays and railroad disasters."
He's not being blamed for them. He is being criticized for his response to them. You recognize the difference, right?
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/05/i-love-pete-buttigieg/
Tina Trent @ 11:42 ... that's great writing.
Althouse trolling of the commentariat is typically better than this.
What Tina said (as usual).
Tina Trent said...
"And perhaps, Althouse, you would care, if it was your face being punched and your pension being threatened."
Ah. Yes, Tina. Those who have no stake in the game constantly telling those of us who do what we should be doing.
Yes I want a president who is so smart he can work 2 days a week and then go to the beach.
I'm afraid we've got one.
Just substitute "basement" for "beach".
What you choose to write about is more important than the quality of the writing. The choice of topic is small and no amount of finesse can change that.
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