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Usually when a journalist tries to write a hit piece, he frames the individual, organization, or movement to which he happens to be opposed in the least flattering way he possibly can.
The intention is generally to create a poison gas cloud that makes people despise the subject.
But one journalist for New York Magazine tried to write a hit piece against young Republicans which made them look enviable rather than detestable, even after his most desperate efforts.
Seems like a massive self-own.
The most viral part of the New York Magazine feature story was the cover of the edition, which showed sharply dressed young Republicans at a swanky party venue on inauguration eve.
The author of the article wrote that the young men “look like Pete Hegseth, in bow ties and black suits, with clean-shaven faces,” while the young women “are almost all out of their league.” That certainly reads much more like a compliment than an insult, despite the intentions of the writer.
Even the typical lazy insults hurled at Republicans fell flat after some further scrutiny.
The feature cropped all of the black people out of the cover photo, ignoring the fact that the party was hosted by a black person, and then falsely insisted that “almost everyone is white.”
Such an overused tactic.
Now to be clear, many of these young people could at best be described as Republicans, and probably not as conservatives. Some seemed to have an openness toward licentiousness, at least based on the interviews recorded in New York Magazine, if those can even be trusted.
But the aesthetics of the young Republicans were the most noteworthy element of the entire story, especially when compared to the aesthetics one would see among young Democrats.
Matt Walsh noted that the photo showed how “a picture of young successful happy people at a trendy cocktail party reads as right wing,” just like “a picture of a dad in flannel drinking a beer at Texas Roadhouse,” showing that the modern right can be both metropolitan and down to earth.
The commentator meanwhile observed that “the only pictures that read as left wing” in this particular cultural moment “are those of ugly, fat, mentally ill, dysfunctional, friendless weirdos.”
The right is indeed culturally ascendant, seeing as even the hit pieces from their enemies make them look that way. But that is no surprise when one sees the competition offered by the left.
