Pylimitics

The Crooks and Liars website publishes political commentary. Their recent story about the orange baby and Natalie Harp, the apparently troubled young woman who idolizes it, includes this, that the orange baby “…still has the power to inspire that sort of loyalty…“

I think this is a basic error, and a very common one. The error is the assumption that when a person is devoted to something, that something is exerting some sort of power or control over them. You see this everywhere, in nonsensical discussions of “leadership” and “leaders,” in references to “idols,” “celebrities,” “cults,” and on and on.

There is a strong odor of magical thinking in this. Magic is the stuff of myths and folktales, where one character exerts invisible control of some sort over another character. Magic does not exist. It’s a plot device (and, IMHO, a cheap one). A handy trope. If Natalie Harp thinks about little else than the orange baby, she is doing that herself. Anything else, on Harp’s part, is simply an abdication of responsibility. Anything else, on an observer’s part, is an abdication of rationality and critical thinking.

There’s no requirement that you think clearly, or at all. You’re completely free to believe the moon is made of cheese and cows jump over it. But if your job is to observe and report on some aspect of the world, which is what a journalist does, I think there is such a requirement. Online journalism hasn’t yet sunk to the level of reporting that the orange baby has a mental z-ray that controls people, but that one line in the Crooks and Liars story suggests they are just to this side of that kind of thing.

Maybe the problem with journalism has always been capitalism. Needing to constantly get readers in order to keep writing asks a lot of your critical and ethical muscles.