ED MORRISSEY: John Fetterman defied ‘effete, elite’ caricatures of the Left, declares … elite Manhattan magazine.
Rarely will one see this much water carried at one time for a political candidate from a supposed journalistic outlet. And in fact, one can’t actually see it unless they buy a subscription to New York Magazine, the elite Manhattan publication that spent a lot of pixels and social-media effort to convince everyone that John Fetterman is not (a) elite, (b) effete, and (c) out of touch.
We can certainly stipulate to (b) — Fetterman doesn’t come across as effete at all. That isn’t just due to his impressive size, physicality, or tattoos, although those are contributing factors. “Effete” isn’t a word that springs to mind, however, for someone who chased down an innocent black man with a shotgun for running through his neighborhood, after all. Nor for someone who vandalized a black business.
As for the rest, it’s tough to argue without reading the article itself. Normally, criticism of such an article without a careful read would be a fraught exercise, but thankfully New York Magazine posted a string of tweets laying out their argument, so we can at least chew over that much. Our colleagues at Twitchy have captured the thread laying out the case for Fetterman as a real man of the people, a man they claim has “attained folkloric stature.”
Somewhere, the late Tom Wolfe must be rolling his eyes over what has happened to the magazine he helped launch.
Related: Fetterman slammed ‘tough on crime’ policies to anti-cop group in 2018.