Yesterday I noted how Washington Post TV columnist Rachel Lubitz made the debut of Ronan Farrow's eponymous afternoon program on MSNBC a "TV Highlight" for the day.
The Post Style section's mission to convince us that we should care about the fair-haired wunderkind -- ermahgerd, he graduated from Yale Law at 21!!!! -- continues apace today with staffer Emily Yahr's mini-bio/timeline, which reads at points like crush-obsessed entries in a diary (emphasis mine):
2004: Farrow graduates from Bard College at age 15, the school’s youngest graduate ever. “Boy genius” title cemented.
2006: Already serving as a spokesperson for UNICEF and working on rights issues around the world, he’s also a journalist, and writes a controversial Wall Street Journal piece about Chinese investments and the Darfur conflict. That story shows his expertise in human rights and foreign policy, and he starts appearing on TV as a commentator.
2009: Farrow graduates from Yale Law School at the age of 21. Most law school students haven’t even started by that age. (Feeling bad about yourself yet?)
Post-law school: Lands a job at the State Department, as a special advisor focusing on conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
2011: Starts working alongside Hillary Clinton with a lengthy title: Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for Global Youth Issues and director of the State Department’s Global Youth Issues office.
Summer 2012: Already an avid Twitter user about human rights issues, his social media presence explodes after a skewering tweet on Father’s Day, referring to Woody Allen’s marriage to Ronan’s adopted step-sister, Soon-Yi:
"Happy father's day -- or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law's day."
Fall 2012: Awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, leaves the State Department to study international development issues at Oxford. (Feeling really bad about yourself yet?)
August 2013: Makes it on to Vanity Fair’s International Best Dressed List — just to rub it in.
October 2013: Farrow goes viral online once more when Mia Farrow tells Vanity Fair that Ronan is “possibly” the biological son of Frank Sinatra (her first husband). Ronan chimes in with the quote of the year:
"Listen, we're all *possibly* Frank Sinatra's son."
October 2013: MSNBC announces Farrow’s new show. Network president Phil Griffin calls it a “game-changer,” and says what we already know: “Ronan has packed more experience in his 25 years of life than most people have in a lifetime.”
January 2014: Woody Allen’s sexual assault allegations resurface after 20 years, as Mia and Ronan are both disgusted by the Golden Globes giving him a Lifetime Achievement Award. They make their feelings known on Twitter. Later, Ronan’s sister, Dylan, writes a New York Times piece detailing the abuse; Allen denies it all in a follow-up. Over the next few weeks, the story once again takes on a new life of its own.
"Missed the Woody Allen tribute - did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?"
February 24, 2014: Farrow’s show launches at 1 p.m. on MSNBC, as the channel revamps its daytime line-up. No talk of his famous roots: He jumps right into his first topic, about the charges against Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych, and segues into the National Governors Association meeting at the White House. Later, he introduces a segment called "Heroes and Zeroes" -- the hero was Lena Dunham for her classy response against feminist Web site Jezebel offering $10,000 for un-retouched images of her Vogue photo shoot; the zero was El Chapo, the drug cartel leader arrested in Mexico.
Let us know if he calls, Emily. If not, well, he might not be that into you.
N.B.: I could not find an online version of the print article, "Ronan Farrow: 'Boy genius,' Twitter star, MSNBC host," but here's the blog post from which it was based.
