Wired mocked for fawning Pete Buttigieg profile: ‘Tiger Beat-level fan drivel’
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Commentators had been left aghast Thursday after Wired magazine revealed a fawning, over-the-top profile of much-maligned Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — with many significantly questioning whether or not the piece was satire.
Buttigieg, 41, was trending on Twitter after the article by veteran journalist Virginia Heffernan — titled “Pete Buttigieg Loves God, Beer, and His Electrical Mustang” — went up on-line.
Critics had been fast to level out that the puff piece largely failed to say controversial points which have dogged Buttigieg’s time as transportation secretary — together with supply-chain issues, en masse flight delays and cancellations, and his dealing with of February’s toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
The gushing piece, as a substitute, turned on Buttigieg’s ideas on his religion, masculinity and the way the US navy typically “comes beneath assault from the far proper.”
At one level, in the course of the masculinity digression, the previous South Bend, Ind. mayor bizarrely volunteered up his most popular burger selection.
“A number of this dialogue about masculinity doesn’t have something to do with the quick perform that’s at stake,” he mentioned. “I’m enthusiastic about burgers, proper? I like a great cheeseburger. I hate a nasty veggie burger. I like a great veggie burger. The Burger King Not possible Whopper with bacon just isn’t a nasty combo.”
Buttigieg went on to argue the US had an opportunity to rewrite gender tropes, together with that electrical automobiles are much less masculine that common automobiles.
“My life occurs to chop throughout them,” he mentioned. “I like consuming beer, lifting weights, splitting wooden. I’m additionally homosexual and I like enjoying piano. I do a variety of the caregiving for our toddlers and different issues that supposedly aren’t masculine.”
Twitter customers additionally took intention on the gushing descriptions of the previous mayor of South Bend, Indiana, together with the topline: “Certain, the US secretary of transportation has ideas on constructing bridges. However infrastructure occupies only a sliver of his voluminous thoughts.”
Heffernan additionally wrote that Buttigieg comes off “like a Mensa black card holder who might need a secret Go behavior or a three-second Rubik’s Dice answer or a knack for supplying, off the highest of his head, the day of the week for a random date in 1404” and argued “his cupboard job requires solely a modest portion of his cognitive powers.”
“Ah sure,” snarked Anang Mittal on Twitter, “one other entry within the liberal hagiographic custom of ‘this man’s too good and too good to do his job’”.
Conservative blogger David Burge mocked: “‘Hey, let’s tone it down a notch, Wired’ – North Korean State TV.”
“Really we dwell in a golden age of gauzy puff items illustrated with artsy pictures about minor authorities functionaries,” Burge went on, later including: “I like how journalists act like they’re hardbitten cynics with a gimlet eye and finely tuned bulls–t detectors, after which publish this type of Tiger Beat-level fan drivel about politicians.”
“Why did somebody interview the Secretary of Transportation and ask nearly no questions on transportation?” asked NewsNation reporter Zaid Jilani.
“His mind rivals a Mensa black card holder however he oversaw one of many largest airline meltdowns in FAA historical past whereas taking three weeks to go to East Palestine??? WTF occurred to Wired,” one Twitter user raged.
“One very primary rule of politics: don’t sit for glowing profiles in the event you’re doing an objectively unhealthy job. Nothing seems dumber than a slobber-fest about your job ‘solely requiring a portion of your Iliad-devouring cognitive powers’ — when you possibly can’t even hold the trains operating,” one other user wrote.
“People are nonetheless horrified by how badly Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden failed the folks of East Palestine, Ohio,” nonetheless another tweeted. “It’s a disgrace media shops are writing puff items for Mayor Pete. The American folks see by way of the mainstream media’s lies.”
Others mocked Buttigieg by suggesting his staff paid for the glowing profile.
“How a lot did the Buttigieg camp pay for this extremely over-the-top puff piece? Nonetheless a lot it was, you clearly gave them greater than their cash’s price,” a Twitter user said.
“AI [artificial intelligence] would by no means embarrass itself with this stage of fawning, attempt that subsequent time,” another added.
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