TUESDAY: Further thoughts about "brilliant writing"...

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2025

...in the wake of the flood: With apologies, connectivity was gone for a good part of the day. This interrupted our ability to continue contemplating what Tina Brown recently said.

In yesterday afternoon's report, we posted her comment. In an interview with the New York Times' Lulu Garcia-Navarro, her comment went like this:

Garcia-Navarro: I have a theory for why there is so much nostalgia: Even as the internet has democratized the way that people get information and who gives information, people are craving a bit more authority. People want a guide through the muck.

Brown: Of course they do. I mean, the gatekeepers have gone. Everyone goes, Yes! As if the gatekeepers were some kind of terrible inhibition to doing anything good. The gatekeepers were also the tastemakers. Lacking those gatekeepers now, it’s just this big blob of stuff and dross that comes careening at you, and you don’t know where to find the good stuff. I think that’s the biggest problem of our time. There is brilliant writing out there. But finding it is like the needle in the haystack. 

We've long regarded Tina Brown as sensible and sharp, but is the highlighted comment accurate? Given the strangeness of the times, is there really any "brilliant writing out there?" And given the strangeness of the times, what sorts of phenomena would any such writing have to identify and try to wrestle with?

We've long regarded Tina Brown as highly sensible and thoroughly sharp. But we're not sure that she was right in what seems like a sensible thought.

That said, we want to take a bit of time to ponder this as a topic for a week-long review. Much as Macbeth once murdered sleep, it seems to us that President Trump has put an end to "brilliant writing," if we're prepared to assume that there was ever some such critter within our American discourse.

Given the damage which has been caused by the flooding of the zone, what sorts of problems would brilliant writing have to address at this point? For ourselves, we can think of no one who is addressing the sweep of the catastrophe into which we've all slid in the past fourteen years. 

For that matter, was there ever any such thing as "brilliant writing" within our public discourse? Did any such creature ever exist in the decades before the flood?