Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

The Potomac Militerati

But for every Eros, there is a Thanatos.

Sex may sell newspapers, but it is War that buys newsmen and publishers.

The do‐gooder who until now was agonizing over what might possibly have happened to two four‐year‐olds in the lunchroom of their preschool is suddenly breezily indifferent to the starvation, burning, and bombing of hundreds of thousands of children.

For, now he is off on another tack. He has become a steely‐eyed pupil of Machiavelli. He talks casually about Realpolitik and Geostrategy, as though he had found them on sale at the local supermarket. He narrows his eyes keenly when he hears the words “national interest”; he can point out Kandahar on a map. He knows the difference between Ayman al‐Zawahiri and Abu Musab al‐Zarqawi without googling.

Now, he is no longer a part of the fourth estate; he is no longer interested in being a watchdog of the people. He has a better‐paying job. He is an attack dog for the politicians.

Here is an MIT security studies maven, writing in a column in the Outlook section of the Washington Post, that the new U.S. strategy of paying Iraqi journalists to place stories favorable to the U.S. in the media is perfectly kosher.² A reporter, says Michael Schrage, should be helping the military along, not just chattering about it. Even Christopher Hitchens, the latest unlikely adornment to the Potomac militerati, has condemned “storyboarding” as a breach of journalistic faith. But Schrage isn't having any.

“Enough already,” ...