theatlantic | On Saturday, Michael Grunwald, a senior correspondent at Time,
stoked controversy by tweeting, "I can't wait to write a defense of the
drone strike that takes out Julian Assange." The tweet triggered an
immediate backlash among people who believe that murder is wrong, and
that expressing preemptive delight at the prospect of defending murder
is wrongheaded and repugnant.
Shortly thereafter, Grunwald apologized to
his followers, called his tweet "dumb," and deleted it. Folks on
Twitter called for his job. Even though, as Amy Davidson noted at the New Yorker, "Grunwald seems a bit oblivious as to what was wrong with what he said," I'm allergic to anyone being fired over any one tweet, especially if they express regret for sending it.
We're all better than we are at our worst moments.
It is nevertheless worth dwelling on his tweet a moment longer,
because it illuminates a type that is common but seldom pegged in
America. You see, Grunwald is a radical ideologue. It's just that almost
no one recognizes it. The label "radical ideologue" is usually used to
describe Noam Chomsky or members of the John Birch Society. We think of
radical ideologues as occupying the far right or left. Lately a lot of
people seem to think that The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald is a radical (often they wrongly conflate the style with which he expresses his views with their substance).
But Grunwald graduated from Harvard, spent a decade at the Washington Post, and now works as a senior correspondent at Time. How radical could someone with that resume possibly be?
Extremely so.
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