Malcolm Gladwell, Dilletante

What is it about Malcolm Gladwell that's so irritating? It's as if he were created in some kind of progressive laboratory intent on annoying the well-informed. Part of it is just his personal affect: the ostentatiously casual attire, the carefully-cultivated bedhead and those teutonic rimless eyeglasses. If there were a Malcolm Gladwell action figure it would come with a Canadian passport, snug-fitting N-95 mask and a bicycle helmet.

Then there's his hugely popular and aggressively facile writing, including such books as Blink, The Tipping Point and Outliers. But worse still is his patented desire to be in good standing at all times with "the right kind" of people, i.e., progressive cosmopolitans. Back when his fellow sophisticate Jeffrey Toobin took the opportunity to masturbate during a New Yorker staff meeting over Zoom, Gladwell was at a loss to figure out what all the fuss was about: "My only feeling - the only way I could explain it," said Gladwell, "was that (The New Yorker parent company) Condé Nast had taken an unexpected turn toward traditional Catholic teaching."

If only it were so! (Other Condé Nast publications include such Catholic brands as Vogue, GQ, Glamour and Vanity Fair.) This and a million other reasons are why it was so gratifying to see Gladwell's historic loss at the prestigious Munk Debates, albeit in opposition to unopposable: "Be It Resolved: You Should Not Trust Mainstream Media." (Apparently Gladwell's busy speaking schedule prevented him from debating in support of the proposition "Babies Should Be Made To Go Hungry.")

Of course Gladwell's suicide mission on behalf of the mainstream media was aided greatly by having as debate partner that font of conventional wisdom, New York Times opinion writer Michelle Goldberg. But still, to lose by the largest margin ever at the Prestigious Canadian Cultural Non-Profit™ — in his hometown, no less! — was enormously gratifying.