Lisa Miller wrote an embarrassingly obsequious profile of the incredibly vulgar and aggressive anti-gun student activist David Hogg for the August 20 New York Magazine, as Hogg's 15 minutes of fame continues after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
Like so many young men in so many foxholes before him, Hogg discovered in himself a powerful drive not to leave this Earth without making a mark....
Hogg understood that he was living in a historical moment. Later that evening, he shouldered past his father, who was blocking the door, and biked back to school, where he offered his eyewitness account to the first television producer he saw. The segment with Laura Ingraham aired live at 10:05 on Fox. It is remarkable to watch -- Hogg with his stoic poise, his David Byrne cheekbones and wide-set stare, his grave expression and small impatient nods of understanding, narrating the day’s atrocities....
By 6 a.m., to his parents’ astonishment, Hogg was in an ABC News van riding back to school, preparing to interview with George Stephanopoulos. Just past nine, on MSNBC, he was smoother now, more assertive and armed with facts....
And a radical star was born, to be beloved in huge profiles like this one.
Hogg was good on TV -- great, even -- and in the marathon of coverage that followed the Parkland shooting, he honed his persona. Angry, edgy, righteous, relentless, he was the warrior who would take anyone on and refused to be knocked off message. The White House called to invite him to the president’s “listening session” on guns, and he hung up on them....
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In June, they announced their summer plans: Along with other kids from Stoneman Douglas, they would take a bus tour across the country to register young voters. Three legs, 75 cities, two months. The parallels to 1964 and Mississippi were unmistakable.
For an anti-gun activist, he has no problem with hanging around presumably armed bodyguards.
Hogg, in fact, was frequently not on the bus but traveling separately in a black SUV accompanied by bodyguards. If he were a politician, one of the staffers told me, the intensity of interest in him would merit 24-hour Secret Service surveillance....
After all the hateful vitriol Hogg has spilled against the National Rifle Association, Miller was offended that the NRA dared push back against Hogg’s anti-gun radicalism.
The NRA seems to take Hogg’s existence as an affront, having tweeted out his name and whereabouts and inciting its approximately 5 million members by perpetuating the falsehood that the Parkland kids want to roll back the Second Amendment....
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A lot of what has catapulted Hogg to this elevated and precarious place is his wonkishness: his dexterity on social media and cable news, his appetite for the nitty-gritty of policy disputes....
But Miller shows us little of this, merely showing a loose-tongued Hogg and a barrage of vulgar insults of virtually everybody.
Miller even spun stories of the activist as a young brat as him being “strong-willed.”
...recalling how he refused to learn to ride the Spider-Man bike his parents gave him in kindergarten, or to take the sailing or golf lessons they pressed on him.
Miller didn’t question Hogg shoehorning the entire left-wing agenda under the narrow gun-control banner.
....“People need to realize that people have died for your vote,” Hogg says. “Free college is on the ballot. The draft is on that ballot. Universal health care is on the ballot. Abortion is on the ballot. Supreme Court is on the ballot. Everything that affects your life and, more importantly, affects the people that come after you is on that ballot. Your inaction today will affect you tomorrow.”
Gun violence has become a galvanizing focus for Hogg’s generation, a direct way to engage in a wide range of progressive issues -- the environment, racism, inequality....
Hogg seems to loathe everyone in current politics save socialist candidate Ocasio-Cortez, though Republicans may be pleasantly surprised to learn that their party is apparently the youth party and may secretly enjoy his nasty if coarse digs against Democrats like these:
....“The reason Republicans are successful right now is because they’re empowering young people,” he told me, pointing out that Paul Ryan was 45 when he became Speaker of the House. “Older Democrats just won’t move the fuck off the plate and let us take control. Nancy Pelosi is old.”
