The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
In the New Yorker piece, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Newsom’s wife, becomes the antidote to the problems that led Newsom to drink heavily and have an affair with a married mother. Siebel Newsom, it is stated, allowed Newsom to “express himself.”
"California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s PR team has been planning this week for months. This is the week that three publications, Vogue, the New Yorker, and the New York Times, were given the go-ahead to publish splashy profiles of Newsom that reveal details from his memoir, which is set to be published later this month. The three publications were offered personal interviews, staged photoshoots, early access to his memoir, and, in two cases, interviews with his family members.
"All of this makes Newsom’s rise to the top of the Democratic field look like the outcome of a meticulously managed effort to make his candidacy seem inevitable, rather than the result of organic momentum.
"Newsom is not — as his book would like to portray — a man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, but rather a political product who has the whole establishment class working in lockstep to choreograph his presidential rise. It’s when Willie Brown and John Burton and Gordon Getty and the whole San Francisco political class handed him his position as mayor of San Francisco and groomed him to rise even further in politics.
"In his PR team’s effort to tightly control the governor’s image and promote this narrative of inevitability, they selected writers who would fawn over Newsom in breathless fashion. (RELATED: Gavin Newsom’s Democrat Fangirls)
"Just look at how much of a joke the Vogue profile is.
"Titled “Gavin Newsom Is Setting His Own Rules,” the article begins by calling the governor “embarrassingly handsome.” Could there be a more embarrassing way to begin a piece?:
Let’s get this out of the way: He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address.
"That was a lot. But it truly gets worse the longer the piece goes on:
"It must drive Trump nuts. Newsom: lithe, ardent, energetic, a glimmer of optimism in his eye; Kennedy-esque.
"Argh! What is this? This must be satire, a joke to see how far the Democratic establishment class can go in demanding that Newsom be selected as the presidential candidate.
"This goes on in just as ridiculous a fashion. We learn Newsom has an “executive strut.” That he is a “self-made millionaire” (he really isn’t). That his tone is “temperate.” He is at one point described in a single sentence as “Immaculate.” Soon thereafter, he is described as — and I’m not entirely sure what this means — “Fantastic at gab, like a windup doll.” We are also treated to this lovely description: “As he spoke, late-summer sun slanted in through the windows, bathing Newsom in an oh so California magic-hour glow.” (RELATED: Gavin Newsom Plots Memoir to Recast Personal Scandals) . . .
Ellie Gardey Holmes is Reporter and Associate Editor at The American Spectator. She is the author of . She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where she studied political science, philosophy, and journalism. Ellie has previously written for the Daily Caller, College Fix, and Irish Rover. She is originally from Michigan.
