Commentators were left aghast Thursday after Wired magazine published a fawning, over-the-top profile of much-maligned Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — with many seriously questioning whether the piece was satire.
Buttigieg, 41, was trending on Twitter after the article by veteran journalist Virginia Heffernan — titled “Pete Buttigieg Loves God, Beer, and His Electric Mustang” — went up online.
Critics were quick to point out that the puff piece largely failed to mention controversial issues that have dogged Buttigieg’s time as transportation secretary — including supply-chain problems, en masse flight delays and cancellations, and his handling of February’s toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
The gushing piece, instead, turned on Buttigieg’s thoughts on his faith, masculinity and how the US military sometimes “comes under attack from the far right.”
At one point, during the masculinity digression, the former South Bend, Ind. mayor bizarrely volunteered up his preferred burger choice.
“A lot of this discussion about masculinity doesn’t have anything to do with the immediate function that’s at stake,” he said. “I’m thinking about burgers, right? I love a good cheeseburger. I hate a bad veggie burger. I like a good veggie burger. The Burger King Impossible Whopper with bacon is not a bad combo.”
Buttigieg went on to argue the US had a chance to rewrite gender tropes, including that electric vehicles are less masculine that regular cars.
“My life happens to cut across them,” he said. “I like drinking beer, lifting weights, splitting wood. I’m also gay and I like playing piano. I do a lot of the caregiving for our toddlers and other things that supposedly aren’t masculine.”
Twitter users also took aim at the gushing descriptions of the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, including the topline: “Sure, the US secretary of transportation has thoughts on building bridges. But infrastructure occupies just a sliver of his voluminous mind.”
Heffernan also wrote that Buttigieg comes off “like a Mensa black card holder who might have a secret Go habit or a three-second Rubik’s Cube solution or a knack for supplying, off the top of his head, the day of the week for a random date in 1404” and argued “his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers.”
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“Ah yes,” snarked Anang Mittal on Twitter, “another entry in the liberal hagiographic tradition of ‘this guy’s too smart and too good to do his job’”.
Conservative blogger David Burge mocked: “‘Hey, let’s tone it down a notch, Wired’ – North Korean State TV.”
“Truly we live in a golden age of gauzy puff pieces illustrated with artsy photography about minor government functionaries,” Burge went on, later adding: “I love how journalists act like they’re hardbitten cynics with a gimlet eye and finely tuned bulls–t detectors, and then publish this kind of Tiger Beat-level fan drivel about politicians.”
“Why did someone interview the Secretary of Transportation and ask almost no questions about transportation?” asked NewsNation reporter Zaid Jilani.
“His intellect rivals a Mensa black card holder but he oversaw one of the largest airline meltdowns in FAA history while taking three weeks to visit East Palestine??? WTF happened to Wired,” one Twitter user raged.
“One very basic rule of politics: don’t sit for glowing profiles if you’re doing an objectively bad job. Nothing looks dumber than a slobber-fest about your job ‘only requiring a portion of your Iliad-devouring cognitive powers’ — when you can’t even keep the trains running,” another user wrote.
“Americans are still horrified by how badly Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden failed the people of East Palestine, Ohio,” still another tweeted. “It’s a shame media outlets are writing puff pieces for Mayor Pete. The American people see through the mainstream media’s lies.”
Others mocked Buttigieg by suggesting his team paid for the glowing profile.
“How much did the Buttigieg camp pay for this incredibly over-the-top puff piece? However much it was, you clearly gave them more than their money’s worth,” a Twitter user said.
“AI [artificial intelligence] would never embarrass itself with this level of fawning, try that next time,” another added.
