‘Dilettantism Raised to the Level of Sociopathy’

Michelle Goldberg, in her column for The New York Times:

Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.

Undeterred, he has now arrogated to himself a major role in fighting the epochal health crisis that’s brought America to its knees. “Behind the scenes, Kushner takes charge of coronavirus response,” said a Politico headline on Wednesday. This is dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.

The Times seems unsure how to headline this column. Right now on the web it’s running as “Putting Jared Kushner In Charge Is Utter Madness”. The <title> element in the page’s HTML (which, as I’ve noted several times in the past, often don’t change in many CMSes) is the rather anodyne “Jared Kushner Will Not Save Us From the Coronavirus”.

But when it first hit Twitter earlier today, the headline read “Jared Kushner Is Going to Get Us All Killed”.

★ Friday, 3 April 2020