Elizabeth Holmes, Whiny Right-Wing Academics, the NY Times, and Our Broken Elite Culture
The NY Times, over the weekend, published an article that is essentially a re-branding exercise by Elizabeth Holmes. It also published an op-ed by some right-wing agitators whining that their frankly juvenile paper (seriously, at no point in my academic career, down to about fifth grade, would I have not been ashamed to hand in such weak work. And my teachers, God bless them, wouldn't have let me get away with thinking such puerile whining was acceptable in an academic setting.) was rejected by a prestigious journal. The combination points to something that has been obvious for a while but probably should be called out every time it comes up: our elites are broken.
The Holmes article serves no journalistic purpose. It plays around the edges of saying that Holmes is lying to the reporter, which might be semi-interesting, -- but only semi. This is a woman convicted of fraud around a medical devices company -- we already know she is a liar, and a liar about things that have a direct material effect on people's well-being and perhaps even their lives. That she would lie to a reporter is just south of fire is hot on the revelation scale. But the article doesn't even commit to that angle. Rather, it spends most of its time talking about how Holmes wants us to know that she has changed, that she is not the Jobs-aping fraudster of the past. The article spends a lot of time on her as a new mother and is drenched in soft-focused glamor shots all reinforcing the basic idea of "nice lady".
Why would anyone write such an article? It serves no journalistic purpose. Even if Holmes has changed, it doesn't change her crimes. The article isn't arguing that sentences in these crimes are too harsh, at least not directly. It is not arguing that she was unjustly convicted. It brings no news other than that Holmes doesn't wear black turtlenecks in public anymore. Its sole purpose is to reassure the elite readers of the New York Times that a rich lady who came from the right background is in fact a good person and that she, and by extension, they, don't deserve to be treated as if she was a common criminal. Even if she is. Even if her actions harmed people. Even if her actions lead to a man's suicide. She, and by extension, they, cannot be bad just because she did bad things. Look at where she came from! Look at how much money she made! Look at how nice she is now that she's been caught!
The op-ed about the rejected article is of a piece -- it is flattering to the self-image of the elites. In short, a group of right-wing academics sent in an overly long opinion piece suggesting, with poor to no evidence, that science (yes, all of it) is rejecting the notion of merit in favor of identity politics to a prestigious journal. It was complete nonsense, of course, and rejected as such. That the NY Times gave these people space to whine about their well-earned rejection is a continuation of their taking the side of the right-wing elites in the culture wars in this country. For several years, the Times has equated isolated incidents of over the top college protests with organized right-wing political attacks on tenure, book bans, and attempts to take over school boards in order to forbid teaching true history and science, and stuffing LGBTQ children back into the closet. Why? Because the elites who read the New York Times can picture themselves being occasionally made uncomfortable by someone challenging their pre-conceived notions in public. They cannot see themselves or their children having their education stymied or their lives and mental health put at risk by local school boards or the trustees of state colleges. Such institutions are for the little people.
Our elite conversation is completely broken. The concept of accountability is foreign to the point that one of the most obvious fraudsters in a generation can be forgiven because she comes from the right class, the right race, and has the right look. Full on assaults on free speech, academic integrity, and the mental health of children can be overlooked and be replaced by a moral panic over an essentially non-existent cancel culture because the people in power fear even the possibility of a mild rebuke.
Our elites, the people with economic and political power, now hold themselves apart from the shared national consensus. They don't believe that they should be subject to accountability when they do wrong. They don't believe that the problems of everyday citizens matter, at least compared to the possibility of mild discomfort in their own lives. When you find yourself asking why the New York Times is so bad at reporting on the real word, so out of touch with how things actually are, you need to understand: they are not, not to the audience they are speaking to. To that audience, to the people with the money and power, the New York Time is reflecting back to them the concerns and fears they actually care about.
Unfortunately for the rest of, those people don't care about the real world or the people who have to live in it.