Guy in Your MFA Goes to Washington

May 7, 2016 7:13 AM

David Samuels profiles the White House's deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, Ben Rhodes, and finds "an only slightly updated version of what Holden Caulfield might have been like if he grew up to work in the West Wing." Although the comparison, and the rest of the profile, seem intended to frame Rhodes as a serious thinker and decision-maker, Rhodes's derision toward the press corps ("They literally know nothing"), jaundiced candor about the "spin" used in selling the Iran deal, and statements like “I don’t know anymore where I begin and Obama ends" have set the media establishment afire with hot takes and critiques.
posted by sallybrown (18 comments total)

The reporters stamping and pouting because someone said rude things about them are missing the point of the article. It is, in part, about how decent people lock each other into closed psychological loops within which they are capable of doing morally questionable things that they would not otherwise do.

However, the major import of the story is that Rhodes, who is so completely Obama's man that he does not give one fuck what happens after Obama leaves office, tells the truth about the current state of opinion manipulation:

No one buys newspapers any more, because everyone gets their news off that little box just right of center high on the Facebook page, which is populated by an algorithm that looks at what people are sharing on Facebook. As a result, newspapers can't afford foreign correspondents anymore, and so reporters also get their news off the internet. Congress is populated by people elected on the basis of their complete ignorance of government. They too get their information off the internet. This has led to three developments.

1. People who can run internet PR campaigns have become so important that they not only advertise policy, they make policy.

2. Such people can and do monitor their target audiences' every source of internet information.

3. Such people can and do arrange that every single avenue of information that their target audience gets information from reflects their message simultaneously, without letting it be apparent that they are sending all the messages.
posted by ckridge at 7:36 AM on May 7, 2016 [42 favorites]

Are these catty comments about Ambassador Power's shoes supposed to be some sort of callback to the weird bit where he quotes a description of a drunk woman from Rhodes's fiction?

Power is now the American ambassador to the United Nations. Her attire suggests a disingenuous ambivalence about her role in government that appears to be common among her cohort in the Obama administration, with a cardigan made of thick, expensive-looking cashmere worn over a simple frock, along with silver spray-painted rock ’n’ roll sneakers. See, I’m sympatico, the sneakers proclaim.

posted by straight at 8:14 AM on May 7, 2016

"They literally know nothing"

He's not wrong.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:16 AM on May 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I found a lot of things about this article bizarre, but this

It was an interesting encounter to imagine, between Kissinger, who made peace with Mao’s China while bombing Laos to bits, and Rhodes, who helped effect a similar diplomatic volte-face with Iran but kept the United States out of a civil war in Syria, which has caused more than four million people to become refugees. I ask Rhodes how it felt being seated next to the embodiment of American realpolitik. “It was surreal,” he says, looking off into the middle distance. “I told him I was going to Laos,” he continues. “He got a weird look in his eye.”

turned my stomach.

I just find it so disappointing that someone who demonstrates his level of immature thinking and grandstanding has such an incredibly large amount of power, due in part to the privilege that allowed him to follow his whims to this track in the first place. I think part of the rage from the press corps is coming from not just the facts he revealed about the Iran media strategy and the insults he leveled, but resentment at this particular guy being in his particular place.
posted by sallybrown at 9:34 AM on May 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Truly an extraordinary piece of breathily vile insider smarm, front to back. It's like a transcript of two Guys in Your MFA getting together for a bukkake session over a Predator drone.
posted by RogerB at 11:39 AM on May 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Given that Powers just ran over a kid...

I would favourite ckridge's comment again and again.
posted by infini at 12:08 PM on May 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn't.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 12:35 PM on May 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

This article.....could it have been more masturbatory? The writer, like the subject, is very much in love with his own words. I think neither of them come off well, but Rhodes just totally shot himself and possibly the potus, in the foot with this self aggrandizing falderal.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 2:23 PM on May 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

The reporters stamping and pouting because someone said rude things about them are missing the point of the article.

The point of the article is that Rhodes will be looking for a new job soon. For some strange reason he doesn't trust that the Democratic establishment will have one waiting for him, and thus Rhodes has put out an advertisement of his talents and experiences.

I don't think there's anything deeper one can draw from an article by a media operator like Rhodes - he's a government propagandist who's decided to use his resources for personal benefit. Wouldn't trust him if he said the sky was blue.
posted by kithrater at 2:37 PM on May 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Oh wow, I hadn't even thought of that angle. Well spotted, you!
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:42 PM on May 7, 2016

That's one of the strangest reported articles I've ever read. I conclude that Samuel thought he was doing a gonzo piece and so it was nothing for him to intersperse his own thinking with what he heard Rhodes saying. Rhodes is obviously giving the guy access to his regular, non-political, manner of speech. It may be a self-promotion piece (I don't concede it 100%), but it seems in keeping with the huge Goldberg article in The Atlantic from a few weeks ago on BO's foreign policy - it's just the White House trying to write the record in the admin's wind-down.

I have zero problems with the propaganda* side of things [scientists primed on Iran deal] and saying 'the blob' and other sundry snark is what I expect is the gallows humour of that particular situation. I see nothing wrong with BO having a trusted advisor so in tune with his own thinking that he's an authority on where BO will land on m/any subject/s. Who the fuck else would you want hammering out policy and international agreements and speaking on your behalf? I also sense a negging tone in the article of Rhodes supposedly having too much power or the somesuch, but the guy is also said to be meeting with BO a few fucking hours a day, so the snide implying doesn't mesh with ground reality.

*except, for instance, where Samuel twisted what the WH Digital Media lady said about her following journos like Rozen because Rozen RTd all the arguments against the Iran deal (making WH lady's job of corralling of critical tweets easier) into implying that Rozen was a WH patsy. It's sloppy. Samuel doesn't seem to grasp the larger picture of modern administration communications despite that being one of his topline threads in the article.

Samuel, I don't know what to believe in your article. Put down the acid and go back to journalism school
posted by peacay at 12:01 AM on May 8, 2016

Like the author of the "afire" link, I found myself pondering this while reading:

Being flat out told that you were lied to, manipulated, condescended to, patronized, and boxed in by a 38-year old who never studied your work and who ignored and discounted the decades you put into a topic would make anyone angry. And it should! So I am left, once again, wondering why such an alleged media mastermind would cap himself in the knees when he still has 10 months left in his job.

posted by salvia at 12:38 AM on May 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

A few thoughts about the New York Times Magazine profile that's transfixed foreign policy watchers.
posted by infini at 10:31 AM on May 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Transfixed.
posted by infini at 10:31 AM on May 9, 2016

Some follow-up.

Ben Rhodes Needs Some Fresh Air
Ben Rhodes and the 'Retailing' of the Iran Deal
posted by chavenet at 1:33 PM on May 10, 2016

Vox/Matt Yglesias: The raging controversy over a profile of Ben Rhodes, explained
posted by peacay at 2:55 PM on May 12, 2016

Was the Iran nuclear deal just a triumph of White House spin?

How the New York Times Magazine Botched Its Iran Story

posted by Golden Eternity at 4:12 PM on May 17, 2016

The latest Chapo Trap House has a great discussion on this:
posted by Golden Eternity at 1:22 PM on May 19, 2016