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Episode 229: Sociopathic 'You Got To Hand It To 'Em' Punditry and the Rise of Politics as Sport

Added 2025-10-01 16:41:14 +0000 UTC

"What Liberals Can Learn from Ron DeSantis," opines New York Times columnist Pamela Paul. "I've had my disagreements with [Netanyahu], but he's handled this remarkably well," declares CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. "President Trump, in terms of raw accomplishments, crushed his first six months in historic ways," argue Axios founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen.

There's a recurring mode of punditry in elite media: extolling the so-called tactics, accomplishments, and victories of far-right figures in global politics — whether they be Trump, Netanyahu or a seemingly never ending revolving door of cruel, mean and violent demagogues using their power to hurt the vulnerable. Media pundits put on their ESPN commentator caps and reduce the life and death domain of politics to a sport, with winners and losers and, of course, the all-important horserace. And the savvy commentators in question, who are "just calling balls and strikes," we are led to believe, have no skin in the game, are rooting for no particular outcome but simply Respect A Winner When They See One.

What’s at stake when major media personalities remove normative and moral context to applaud such deeply sinister people? How does this serve to rehabilitate war criminals, and promote and downplay the human stakes of genocide, austerity regimes, discrimination? And how does this mode of reducing deeply important issues of who is permitted to live and prosper and who is condemned to death and hardship to a sporting event desensitize the public to politics, sow cynicism, and seek to turn us all into dispassionate observers of politics as game.

On this episode, we examine the trope of sociopathic reporting and punditry that prizes “accomplishments” over morality and human stakes. We look at how media outlets use praise of ostensibly neutral personality traits like “intelligence,” “earned media” and “racking up wins” to obscure urgent matters of ideology, and how the broader media trend of politics as sport is designed to naturalize processes of mass dispossession and death, reducing politics to something we game out, witness, and gawk at rather than participate in.

Our guest is editor and writer Jack Mirkinson.

Guest

Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson / jackmirkinson.bsky) is senior editor at The Nation and co-founder of Discourse Blog.

Show Notes

Spiritual Successor: Episode 87: Nate Silver and the Crisis of Pundit Brain ( Sept. 18, 2019)

Just another battle or the Palestinian war of liberation?

Joseph Massad | October 8, 2023 | The Electronic Intifada

You Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, “Gotta Hand It to” Ron DeSantis

Chris Lehmann | February 9, 2023 | The Nation

As Right Media Hail DeSantis as ‘Woke’ Killer, Centrists Admire His Brand

Ari Paul | February 14, 2023 | FAIR

Some Rules for Journalists Reporting on Fascism and Fascists in 2024

Daniel Froomkin | January 26, 2024 | Common Dreams

The many ugly polls on Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’

Aaron Blake | June 20, 2025 | CNN

The truth about Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee: He wasn't very good at his job

Michael S. Rosenwald | May 19, 2017 | The Washington Post

Robert E. Lee

W.E.B. DuBois | March 1928 | The Crisis (h/t Kevin Levin)

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here. You can also find transcripts of past episodes, live shows, Beg-a-Thons, Interviews and News Briefs here.

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