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Yesterday, Politico ran a piece mourning the death of swagger in journalism. The writer Jack Shafer laments that “wounded and limping, doubting its own future, American journalism seems to be losing a quality that carried it through a century and a half of trials: its swagger.” Hmm, “wounded and limping.” Sounds like they’re describing one of Kristi Noem’s dogs.
It doesn’t end yet!
But Earth to legacy media: You can stop crying now. It’s over, and you lost bigly. You’re less trusted than week-old tuna salad. Shafer’s point is that journalism has become too timid, but his real purpose seems to be a call to action for his fellow reporters to get tougher. Sorry, Brian Stelter can’t even do a girl push-up.
Now, Shafer goes on to claim that there are a few approved journalists out there with swagger, but apparently his definition of swagger is writers who despise half the country because, of course, they’re all either left or far-left. The article is a bit like listening to your grandfather reminisce about the crazy days of his youth while walking around the old age home with the back of his hospital gown open. Or, if we’re talking Biden — the front.
But the article cluelessly proves its own point. If Shafer, a long-time media type around New York and D.C., set out to mourn the death of traditional journalism, he just wrote its epitaph. And on that gravestone, of course, would be a story about RussiaGate.
MEDIA MELTDOWN: WHY JOURNALISM IS BATTERED AND BLEEDING
What traditional media miss today isn’t swagger. Like Joe Biden’s bowels, it’s control. Strangely, all of the swaggering types that Shafer cites from the good old days are the characters who would be drummed out of the first newsroom they applied to by people like Jack Shafer.
I’m talking about the hard-drinking, hard-charging, grizzled white dudes who were often abrasive, obnoxious and politically incorrect. Think Lee Marvin but with a typewriter. The kind of dinosaurs that founded the country but are now the world’s designated Bond villain. If Ben Franklin were alive today, he’d be sitting in HR, lectured by a non-binary Karen because no women signed the Declaration of Independence.
But really what Schafer’s mad about is that the media are no longer seen as heroes. He writes, “… thanks, in part, to a fall in status, as well as ever-irrational attacks from politicians like Trump, today’s journalists routinely experience ridicule and harassment at public events like rallies and demonstrations.”
True, they’re Kilmeade in high school. So let’s get this straight: You sold us a years-long lie on Russian collusion. You tried to convince us that a laptop that was obviously genuine was fake. You were cheerleading the bogus lawfare against the leading presidential candidate.
Now you’re crying because Trump doesn’t like you? Because the rest of us no longer genuflect? You’re lucky we don’t lock up your entire profession on a RICO charge. But Jack does have a point that today’s mainstreamers are cowards.
Here’s former CNN reporter Michelle Kosinski writing on X about a dinner she recently attended in Florida, which she claims still haunts her. “All were well-educated and successful in careers. They seemed great! On the surface. For like an hour. But slowly, over a few drinks, they began to let slip their true MAGA natures… ”
Wait. Were they polite? Did they pay the bill? Did they not burn down a police station? What gave them away? I bet someone called b******* on her legacy media elitist conformity. Perhaps it was a little MAGA swagger, no? See, it’s not about swagger at all. It’s that someone has more swagger than them.
Trump isn’t living in the legacy media’s head, he’s the f****** landlord who keeps raising the rent. He’s like a squatter the owners can’t get rid of because he changed the locks. So the main thing Shafer misses is that the direction of this doom f****** called journalism originated from the mentality of the grad schools and the groupthink that he coddled.
The Shafers of the world really want to see how the profession degraded? Look no further than the machine that churned out these clones. But Jack can’t say that because he’s one of them, which makes him a bystander to the decline.
You’re not some whistleblower here, Jack. You’re just another cog in the machine. Then there’s this little tell regarding what’s really on this guy’s mind: At the end, he adds, “No, Fox News does not swagger.”
Sorry, have you seen Trace Gallagher? He’s like James Dean mixed with a Dodge Charger. But Jack felt compelled to add that part because he knew that that would be the reaction — that there is swagger, but it’s coming from all the places he and his buddies hate.
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So move over, Donald, you got company in their heads. In fact, there’s plenty of us swaggering around in their tiny brains. Lucky for you, Jack, I don’t take up much space.