Yesterday was the best box of Valentine’s chocolates ever. I’m sure you heard the news— it was the next most encouraging development since Trump won the presidency in an indisputable modern-era landslide. In fairness, I suppose some people were sour about it. Like the Atlantic! Its headline reeked of near hopelessness: “RFK Jr. Won. Now What?” Now what? If they’re asking me, I would suggest: feelings of euphoria, chills, goose pimples, a sense of profound gratitude, and wondrous amazement at how well and quickly we’ve been blessed. But it’s probably impossible to cheer up the Atlantic’s editors.
CLIP: RFK sworn in as HHS Secretary. I’m not crying. You’re crying (1:08).
You can almost take pity on them. The Atlantic’s piece desperately clung to its rapidly shrinking purpose as the elite gatekeeper. “Kennedy holds broadly appealing views on combatting corruption and helping Americans overcome chronic disease,” the Atlantic allowed, admitting Kennedy’s undeniable grassroots support. “But,” they sneeringly continued, “he is also, to an almost cartoonish degree, not impeccably credentialed.”
Haha! Good one! Not impeccably credentialed! To a cartoonish degree! I wonder how long the tortured writers struggled to find the best words to describe their seething hostility without completely lampooning themselves as reeking caricatures of overfed academia. Only four years ago, corporate media clapped like trained seals about the confirmation of another lawyer —a lawyer with no public health background— named Xavier Becerra.
In March, 2021, the New York Times ran a story on Becerra’s confirmation simply headlined, “Senate confirms Xavier Becerra as the secretary of health and human services.” But, unlike the current breathless coverage of Kennedy’s confirmation, the Times covered for Becerra’s limp qualifications. It began by noting Republicans’ similar objections: they’d argued during a pandemic against a partisan lawyer’s nomination to lead the nation’s massive health agencies. A lawyer who was also, in the Atlantic’s loquacious terminology, not impeccably credentialed:
But then the Times punched back using Democrats’ sneering hand-waving. Becerra was qualified, it uncritically reported, because he’d once filed a 20-state lawsuit to protect Obamacare and was “vocal about abortion.” That’s pretty much it:
So. Let us toss the Atlantic’s silly story into the ashcan of failed empire, and consider the headline’s original question: What next?
