(2018-09-05) David Remnick Steve Bannon And The Revolt Against The Elites

David Remnick, Steve Bannon, and the Revolt Against the Elites. Twitter is a repository for the real opinions of real people, but it is also a virtual space that exists in parallel to reality traditionally conceived. It’s governed by its own strange weather. But in this case the online storm pointed to factors that exist outside the online discourse, including a growing distaste for the media-political bubble in which people like Remnick and Bannon live.

this framing of the Festival obscures certain stakes at play. First up, the money. Events are a great way for magazines to make money

The second factor obscured by the cloud of indignation concerns cultural, rather than literal, capital. David Remnick and Steve Bannon are captains of two different elites

They are like prefects of different boarding school houses. Each derives part of his power by opposing the other.

It would have seen two public figures at the pinnacle of their respective clans, coming together to create a spectacle that would generate money for Remnick’s magazine and a mixture of prestige and notoriety for Bannon

If there’s a third issue hidden in the Twitter outrage cycle over the invitation, it’s the uncanny way that Remnick and Bannon have come to be on the same side in this drama. Seeing their names together in so many headlines was reminiscent of John McCain’s recent funeral

Whether the spectacle made an impression on Republicans—only 40 percent of whom had a favorable opinion of McCain—is doubtful. Many on the left were similarly dismayed by the praise showered on Cheney, Kissinger, Bush, and even McCain himself. It was almost as if the funeral, including the media coverage, was designed to represent everything that angry voters resent about the country’s elite.