Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,613

This is the grave of Michael Kelly.

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1957, this utter creature of the Beltway, this King of the Blob, this lover of bombing brown people grew up all around what he would become. His parents were both prominent journalists. His mom wrote for the Post and his dad wrote for the Star. He went to the fancy local high schools and then, for some reason, ended up at the University of New Hampshire. I don’t know the story there, maybe he wasn’t a very good student. Nothing against UNH of course, it’s very much like where I teach. And where I teach for some reason is the alma mater of Christiane Amanpour, which I have never understood.

Anyway, wherever Kelly was going to go to college, he had a nice easy way into journalism. He got a job booking guests for ABC news programs, as well as its variety shows like Good Morning America. Gee, I wonder how he got that job? He wanted to be more of a journalist though and he did some of the jobs in the relative sticks to get back to the Beltway paradise of his parents making. He worked for the Cincinnati Post for a few years in the 80s, until he could get on at the Baltimore Sun and then eventually the New York Times. He was at the Times by 1992. That was right after the first great moment in his life–becoming a complete hack for war, mostly writing articles for The New Republic about it. He loved the Gulf War. It was so glorious! So many bombs! So much good TV! So many good interviews with politicians and generals! Sure, the Bush administration incited Kurds and Shias to revolt and then let them die, but hey, collateral damage baby! He wanted more and more of that. And he would work to get it. He wrote Martyrs’ Day: Chronicles of a Small War in 1993 that was a popular book and of course promoted Kelly himself.

So Kelly now was truly in the media elite. The media elite in the 90s had one major binding point–hating everything to do with the Clinton administration. Kelly modeled himself on the David Broder types who would claim to be centrist but in fact give Republicans breaks on every issue and attack Democrats over trivia. None of this was going to hurt him at the time, that’s for sure. He published widely while still working at the Times–The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine. All of these publications were happy to play along with his ridiculousness. This all led to The New Republic hiring him as editor in 1996. It, uh, did not go well.

Marty Peretz is a horrible human being and he ran TNR in his fashion of horror. Peretz and Kelly most certainly shared a great love of bombing Muslims. But Peretz was buddies with Al Gore and Kelly loathed Gore. That was one of Kelly’s specialities–where most of the Beltway just hated Bill and Hillary, Kelly wanted to take out Gore. He published bullshit after bullshit about the VP and frontrunner for the 2000 Democratic nomination. This infuriated Peretz, who never could separate the magazine he bought with his wife’s money back in the 70s with his personal positions.

But I don’t want to mislead you either–Kelly also hated the Clintons. His infamous 1993 NYT Magazine cover story on Hillary was classic. Published just before Bill was to take off, it was a masterclass in pretending to respect your subject while actually mocking it. It helped create a lot of cliches that the media would love for the next 8 years–Hillary is actually a man and Bill is actually a woman–things that Maureen Dowd could then translate for her column for Times readers who don’t actually like to read. Back in 2020, Michael D’Antonio had a long piece at Talking Points Memo about the creation of the Hillary image that is worth excerpting here.

Hugh Rodham died within twenty-four hours of his daughter’s speech in Austin. When she was interviewed a few weeks later by Kelly, Hillary spoke about spirituality and faith in the way people will after the death of a beloved parent. In Kelly’s hands, this candor was combined with his own musing on so-called New Age religion to create an image of Hillary as self-important and clueless. 

Published under the cringeworthy title “Saint Hillary,” the article  opened with roughly eight hundred words in which Michael Kelly shared a personal evaluation that found Clinton ambitious, immune to irony, and “cocky” because, among other things, she noticed as a girl that the world was often cruel and, as the writer put it, she “would like to make things right.” When he finally gave someone else a chance to speak, he reported that Clinton agreed with his suggestion that what she really sought was some sort of “unified field theory” for improving the world. But this wasn’t her idea. It was his. (Borrowed from physics, the phrase unified field theory was often used in silly ways by New Agers who wanted to add a pseudoscientific sheen to their spiritual ideas.) “That’s right, that’s exactly right!” Hillary agreed as Kelly baited her with it. The exclamation mark was Kelly’s addition, of course. It guaranteed that no reader would fail to notice her enthusiasm.

Despite Hillary’s repeated insistence that she was open to others’ views and unsure about her role, the clear purpose of the piece was to cast her as overly ambitious and dangerous in her certainty. This criticism could be made of anyone with high hopes and big plans, especially those who expressed them with great confidence. Hillary, on the other hand, told Kelly, “I don’t know, I don’t know,” when an aspect of a problem stumped her, and she freely admitted, “It’s not going to be easy,” when pressed on just how she would address social problems. If this earnestness and ambition were worthy of mockery, what would Kelly have written of a First Lady who had no desire to do good in the world?

I don’t know, was the theoretical first lady a Democrat or a Republican?

Then there was Kelly’s work with Stephen Glass. I remember reading those Glass columns at the time. I didn’t think he was making it all up or anything like that. I guess I am not creative or cynical enough to assume that upon reading. I just thought he had ridiculous access somehow. But of course Glass was lazy and power-hungry, so he just created his own narratives. The thing about Kelly is that he defended Glass all the way! He went further–he would directly attack anyone who suggested Glass made things up! Between this and the Gore stuff, Peretz fired Kelly and hired Charles Lane to clean up the damage, which was only partially successful and TNR would remain basically trash until Peretz finally sold it. Now it’s great again! In Shattered Glass, Hank Azaria had the joy of playing Kelly.

Do you think this hurt Kelly? It’s the Beltway, baby! No way! The National Journal brought him and eventually he rose to managing editor. No one really reads National Journal, but it’s a good place for Beltway people who are a bit down and out now.

Kelly loved him some strong American military. That was especially true when it included bombing the Middle East. Even before he got to the Times, he was pushing his freelance stories that told DC policymakers exactly what they wanted to hear–bombing Iraq was always a good thing. He became one of the figures in journalism openly cheerleading for war. He thought he could do that without consequence, but as he found at later, sometimes in life, you do in fact get what you ask for.

After 9/11, Kelly was rabid about wanting to bomb the Middle East. Did it matter who was really responsible? Of course not. Let’s not ask hard questions about where the bombers were actually from or something like that. The only thing he had liked about Bill Clinton was when Clinton decided to bomb brown people and so of course he was going to love George W. Bush here. Meanwhile, as opposition to invading Iraq for completely spurious and made-up reasons developed, Kelly lost his mind. He started going completely rabid on the anti-war movement, such as it was. Any critic of the war was a scumbag and a traitor to America. That was especially true of Al Gore, who mostly stayed out of the limelight after 2001, but who spoke out against what Bush wanted to do in Iraq. Writing in the Washington Post, Kelly said of Gore’s speech that it “was one no decent politician could have delivered” and that it was “bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies.”

I mean sure, except that Bush was the liar, Gore was right, and Kelly was an absolute hack and disgusting human being. Many years later, even Kelly’s friends admitted that it was a low point in his career.

But hey, Kelly wanted to go to war! 1991 was so much fun! Let’s kick some Iraqi ass! After all, we already know they can’t do anything to us, we are America and they are a bunch of towelheads, amirite? Kelly was so fucking excited to have his war, write about it, win some more prizes, and make this the crowning point of his career.

So Kelly managed to get embedded into the 3rd Infantry Division. He was in a humvee in April 2003 that was heading toward the Baghdad airport. Iraqi soldiers opened fire on it. Kelly was killed. He got what he deserved. What a terrible human being. He was 46 years old. I only wish he would have lived so he could be shamed for all the many lives lost in both Iraq and the United States thanks the war he so rabidly cheered and wanted. I think I recall laughing upon hearing this.

Today, the Atlantic’s parent company, Atlantic Media, has a Michael Kelly Award it gives each year to a journalist for “the fearless pursuit and expression of truth.” What that has to do with Michael Kelly, I have no idea.

Michael Kelly is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

If you would like this series to visit other Beltway hack journalists who made the world worse in their careers, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. David Broder is in St. James, Michigan and Robert Novak is in Silver Spring, Maryland. Let’s have fun and send me to bad journalist graves. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.