An Inbred Political Elite and News Media?

Today’s hiring of Jenna Bush Hager provides Salon’s Glenn Greenwald the opportunity to pooh-pooh the idea that America is a meritocracy, It’s time to embrace American royalty. He offers up the elite news media and elite politicians–two occupations least responsive to merit–as proof.

They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it’s really unfair for anything other than merit to determine position and employment. They can interview Lisa Murkowski, Evan Bayh, Jeb Bush, Bob Casey, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, Dan Lipinksi, and Harold Ford, Jr. about personal responsibility and the virtues of self-sufficiency.

Lumping in Megan McCain–a darling creature of the Mainstream Media whose only known talent is whining about conservatives (a chip off the old block)–with Jonah Goldberg and Chris Wallace muddies Greenwald’s thesis of “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”–or who you are.

Both Goldberg and Wallace have a body of work that can stand on its own. At least the media is a paying proposition: those companies that hire famous children pay a price for choosing celebrity over merit.

Greenwald is definitely on firmer ground about the elite political class which has risen over the last 30 years from the offspring of mediocre-at-best politicians.

During that time, the country has suffered from this nepotistic in-breeding of a national political class that offers a strong argument in favor of political eugenics.

by Mondo Frazier
image: klaussloves.files.wordpress.com