The Dimmest Man in a Very Dim Profession

One of the many great things about Parasite is that it had a very clear thesis–the rich have no requirement to be smart because their money covers up for their rank stupidity. Meanwhile, the poor have to be smart to survive. I was thinking of this throughout this absolutely crazy profile of Nicolas Kristof that Olivia Nuzzi wrote. I’ve despised Kristof for years. I remember when I first started at this blog, I wrote a column about his white savior mentality toward Cambodian sex workers, noting that his obsession felt an awful lot like what you saw a century ago with white slavery activists, which often saw a sexual attraction at its core. Several commenters were outraged that I would state such a thing and being early in my time here, I deleted it. Wish I hadn’t because shortly after, it came out that in fact Somaly Mam, his connection in Cambodia, was paying women to claim they were sex workers in order to bilk money out of Kristof and his idiot friends. And yet, not only did Kristof not suffer for his false columns at the Times, it had no impact on his career at all. He just moved on. Now he is all about being the White Working Class Savior with his ridiculous run for governor of Oregon. For awhile there, I thought he was trying to be JD Vance except for wealthy Times readers. But after reading this profile, that’s not quite accurate. He’s a Connor Roy, a complete moron except that instead of being a fascist, he’s still a social liberal for very wealthy people. But let’s be clear, Kristof is a very, very stupid man and it doesn’t matter because he has enough money. Some of the many choice excerpts:

The vineyard was teeming with the buds of Pinot Noir grapes that Kristof plans to harvest for the first time in the fall (already, a mile down the road in Carlton, Kristof Farms cider goes for $11 a bottle at a deli on Main Street, where the girl working the cash register reports it’s been selling pretty well). As he led me to a trail beyond its edge, he talked about his friends and neighbors who had overdosed or committed suicide. Just that morning, an addict he knew had posted a suicide note on Facebook. “I don’t think that most people appreciate that most years, alcohol kills more people than drugs,” Kristof told me, though he clarified that he does not believe this is true of the type of alcohol that he makes. He also does not think that profiting off the sale of alcohol and lowering rates of alcohol addiction, two of his stated immediate goals, are in conflict. “You know, I’ve lost friends to alcoholism, but I haven’t lost any to Pinot Noir alcoholism,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be in favor of barring alcohol in general. I think that wine can be, or cider can be, a social good and can create social capital. Things that bring people together, I think, are good for society. I think alcohol can do that, and I think that’s true of wine and cider. I take your point that some people start with nice Pinot Noirs and then… ,” he trailed off. “But I think that is much less common, and those who die, the mortality from alcoholism, it’s driven really by working-class Americans, and it’s in kind of bulk hard liquor particularly. I don’t think that good wine and cider add significantly to the problem.”

I know I have never heard of a person drunk on wine or addicted to it. And the idea that it is primarily working class people who die of alcoholism, what?????? I mean, in terms of the mortality from poverty, there may be some general truth, but this is so typical of Kristof’s entire mentality–the rich guy who does one thing for his people and tells the proles to do something else. The answer is of course prohibition except for the types of alcohol of which Kristof personally approves, i.e., what he profits off on his farm. Great start here.

Critics (whom, in case you forgot, Men in the Arena absolutely hate) characterize Kristof as a White Savior Complex head case or an easy mark for sob stories that oversimplify and overdramatize complicated global affairs. Kristof does not especially care. “In general, the problem around the world has not been white saviors eager to save people of color. It’s been that the world has been much more interested in saving the lives of white people than people of color. We intervened in Kosovo and not Rwanda or Darfur,” he said.

And he is eager to point out how often he has pushed the boundaries of journalistic norms in order to save people. In China, he said, he helped smuggle a dissident out of the country: “I don’t know; should I be breaking the law?” In Sierra Leone, he said, he helped the police arrest an alleged rapist. He paid to free two Cambodian girls enslaved in a brothel, which he told students at Columbia was “probably the first time a New York Times reporter had bought two human beings.” Even on the farm, Kristof was intervening to help creatures less capable. “I’m helping the hawks with the voles,” he said. He had snipped the grass into a crew cut to give the hawks a better chance of spotting their prey. (There was something in it for Kristof, too. The voles posed a threat to the vineyard.)

Oh there’s always something in it for Kristof. No good deal ever goes unself-promoted. And note the continued complete lack of self-reflection he has over his entire career, including his many false columns in the Times about Cambodia.

He remembered once, as a columnist, rushing into a village in Darfur and asking if anyone had been shot, and the first wounded person he found was an elderly man who had been shot in the leg. “I knew immediately that I could do better, that I could find a case more compelling,” Kristof said.

I got nothing.

Then there is Kristof’s run for governor of Oregon. This was comedy gold all the way.

Politics, too, can require cynical calculations. In its first fundraising disclosure, the campaign unveiled a donor list that could well double as a flight manifest for a charter to Davos. Kristof said he was “pleasantly surprised” to find that political fund-raising did not present “ethically compromising” challenges, at least not when phoning the global business and media elite from the forgotten lands of rural America. “I was raising quite a bit of money from outside Oregon,” he said. “Nobody really had issues for the Oregon governor.” Melinda Gates chipped in $50,000. Venture capitalist and Goldman Sachs alum David Cohen gave $50,000 too. Thomas Bernthal, a “strategic consulting agency” executive who is engaged to Sheryl Sandberg, also gave $50,000. Another $10,000 came from Angelina Jolie, and another $5,000 from Larry Summers.

No ethically compromised people there!

“Would he have been a good governor? How the fuck do I know?” the longtime friend said. “He’s certainly well intentioned. The thing I couldn’t get over is he didn’t vote in Oregon in the last election.” Kristof voted in New York in 2020. “It’s like, What the fuck? The only condition in which I’ll move back to the state is if you make me governor?”

Good question!

Asked if he would consider a state office besides the office of governor, he said, “In Oregon?” He paused. “If I’m trying to figure out how I can bring about the greatest change on issues I care about, I’m just not sure that that’s how I can do it.” Besides, he added, “one of the advantages of losing one’s job very publicly is that you get a lot of job offers. Running a foundation, running a news organization, running a couple of universities. But I like journalism, and I think it’s hard to beat the journalistic toolbox for making a better world.” (He would not rule out entirely the hypothetical notion of working in the Biden administration in the event that the president called.)

It is Connor Roy! This is all about him being the Leader He Looks At In the Mirror. I love the idea that he might lower himself to a Cabinet position or something that is never going to come, but otherwise, no state legislature for Kristof. No way! That’s for chumps. Look at that jaw in the mirror after all!

Back at the top of the hill, we were joined by WuDunn at a picnic table in the shed. “Oh!” she said. “Did he tell you that the secretary of state has a handbook — the ‘blue book’— that they publish every year? It announces every year the most famous and prominent Oregonians, and he’s on the list twice!” (Kristof had in fact mentioned it already — twice.) Asked about this, Fagan said, “From a legal perspective, it means nothing, the blue book. Nobody’s questioning whether he’s an Oregonian, but it doesn’t mean you can run for governor.”

Friends, it is possible I am one of the 100 Most Prominent Graduates of Springfield High School in Oregon. If there was a book listing these people, I would probably be in it. Let me tell you about this repeatedly.

You just can’t get a smarter columnist than this. Good thing he will remain producing Kristof Produced Booze That Is Good For You Because He Makes It and can go back into his bullshit journalism anytime he wants.