Sometimes journalists befuddle me, and I’m a journalist – although my touchy detractors would dispute that.
Perhaps like you, I have been watching – with a healthy dose of bemusement and amusement – the outrage-du-jour dominate the latest 24-hour “news cycle” in North America and beyond.
Such is the squirrel-like attention span of many of my perpetually outraged colleagues, that today’s outrage usually has a short life expectancy since another outrage inevitably comes along tomorrow.
But the outrage seizing Washington, DC – the capital of outrage – appears poised to consume the Beltway press corps for more than a day or two.
When that happens, the outrage tends to evolve into a four-alarm scandal which journalists crave because it often translates into a big, ego-boosting award for the lucky scribe who triggered the original outrage.
The defining ingredients of a scandal have already fallen into predictable place: a host of outraged politicians – this time largely Democrats – and a wind-up stable of “national security experts” have rushed onto TV to say that they are outraged and to demand investigations into why the outrage happened and resignations of the powerful architects of the outrage.
I reckon that soon enough the new scandal will be christened “Appgate” by some lethargic editor in homage to the old scandal of all scandals – Watergate – thus confirming its status as a scandal.
Why Appgate?
Apparently, much of America’s national security establishment, up to and including Vice President JD Vance, thought it was a wise idea to start an 18-person group chat on the Signal messaging app to have a detailed tete-a-tete about whether to bomb Yemen before they bombed Yemen.
Fuming pundits are in a tizzy because these sorts of “highly classified” discussions are supposed to occur in the secure “Situation Room” near the Oval Office, not in an online forum using open-source encryption that any kid capable of solving a Rubik’s cube in less than 30 seconds can bypass on a dare.
Oh, and a familiar gallery of hysterical cable news personalities have been running around in apoplectic circles, shouting “all is lost” after learning that Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the establishment-hugging The Atlantic magazine, was invited to join the select “chat group” by mistake.
An astonished Goldberg was privy, in real time, to what constitutes “war planning” in United States President Donald Trump’s “merit-based” regime that values incompetence over discretion as a job prerequisite.
Cue the outrage machine to lurch into high and hyperbolic gear.
I acknowledge that Vance and clownish company make the hapless Maxwell Smart look like John Le Carre’s fictional master spy, George Smiley.
Still, a lot of the anguished huffing and puffing misses the cheeky point.
Rather than denouncing the Trump administration’s accidental openness and transparency, the fourth estate should, instead, be celebrating it.
Generation after generation of high-minded journalists have lectured presidents and prime ministers on the necessity for more “light” to staunch the suffocating secrecy that, as a disconcerting rule, envelops the affairs of state.
When the stealth shroud drops – for whatever reason by whoever’s hand – grateful reporters and editors must exploit the welcomed opportunity for as long as they can and share the wonderful fruits of their unexpected all-access-pass with audiences far and wide.
So, let’s give credit where credit is due, and thank US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz for his stunning hospitality by allowing a journalist to record the childish musings – complete with a slew of infantile emojis – of a bunch of giddy frat-boys who remain convinced that they are “statesmen”.
I wish “senior officials” in other secrecy-obsessed countries would follow Waltz’s laudable lead and let journalists witness – on purpose or in error – the banal “inner workings” of cavalier members of the bureaucratic equivalent of the so-called “principals committee”, particularly when it involves lethal matters of war and peace.
That way, the stubborn myths would be laid bare about the “serious” men and women who populate the shrines to power in Western capitals and are obliged to “debate” the consequences and implications of killing innocents in sovereign nations.
Every journalist in every newsroom in the world knows that Goldberg’s good fortune is the stuff that dreams are made of.
Sure, he is “outraged” at the outrageous security breach. Truth be told, it has been a blessing for Goldberg’s fast-fading-into-the-sunset career, too.
He is the talk of the incestuous town. Goldberg’s doting chums on CNN and MSNBC – who refer to the Washington fixture as “JG” – have shone the intoxicating limelight on the suddenly in-demand editor to revel in his agenda-setting scoop that has ricocheted across the globe.
All the flattering attention has, I suspect, acted as a balm to soothe Goldberg’s “outrage”.
The mystery to me is why did he not play possum and take full advantage of being a silent partner at the heart of what passes for the Trump “brain trust” carving out what passes for a “foreign policy”.
Goldberg ought to have hovered quietly and gathered a few more delicious “revelations” before pulling his parachute.
Shortsighted fool.
I know. I know. Outraged patriot that he is, Goldberg put the “national interest” ahead of his professional interests to raise the urgent alarm.
Right.
The other mystery is why Trump – who reportedly does not clock in on-the-job until almost noon, was not party to the group chat’s plans to attack those troublesome Houthis.
I’m spitballing here, but it strikes me that America’s clueless commander-in-chief, who admits that he is clueless about many things, does not have – like me – a clue what the Signal app is and how to use it.
Trump may have had other pressing concerns on his preoccupied mind like organising hefty corporate sponsorships for the White House’s annual Easter egg hunt or making sure the Oval Office button to deliver his beloved Diet Coke on a silver platter was in reliable order.
Ah, the burdens of being the “leader of the free world”.
We can also confirm, courtesy of JG, that Vance and blustering et al believe that Europeans are “pathetic” “freeloaders” who have been bailed out, again and again, by the US.
If there was any doubt before, the transatlantic “alliance” was extinguished on, of all places, an app.
That is not all that may have been extinguished.
Vance’s prospects of succeeding Trump took a potentially fatal hit after the ambitious vice president committed the capital sin of arguing privately that his vindictive boss was making a “mistake” by strafing the Houthis.
What a lovely dividend that would be.
We owe Trump and his 18 chatroom “dwarfs” a debt of gratitude for their rank and revealing ineptness.
Keep up the fine work, please.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
