{"id":163754,"date":"2025-09-20T21:49:43","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T05:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=163754"},"modified":"2025-09-21T05:14:31","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T13:14:31","slug":"the-msmss-fawning-approach-to-liberal-celebrities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=163754","title":{"rendered":"The MSM’s Silly Approach To Liberal Celebrities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why do I see so many fawning celebrity profiles\/essays in the MSM like this one in the NYT: “The Interview: How Reese Witherspoon Figured Out Who She Really Is<\/a>“? They would never do a headline like this over a right-winger. Anyway, you can’t figure out who you really you are because who you are changes depending on context.<\/p>\n

NYT<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Reese Witherspoon has always been ahead of the curve. She got her first big role when she was only 14 years old, securing the lead in \u201cThe Man in the Moon\u201d from an open casting call. By her early 20s, she was a Hollywood A-lister with hits like \u201cElection\u201d and \u201cCruel Intentions,\u201d and a little later, \u201cLegally Blonde.\u201d That prodigy energy carried over into her personal life too: She met her first husband, the actor Ryan Phillippe, at 21. By the time she was 27, she was married with two children.<\/p>\n

But after her Oscar win in 2006 for \u201cWalk the Line,\u201d Witherspoon struggled to find roles and went through a very public divorce. That period, she told me, forced her to change. \u201cI had to get really frustrated and angry in my existing career, to hit the wall, to want to take on a new aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n

That new aspect moved her behind the camera: She co-founded a production company, Pacific Standard, focused on stories for and by women, which landed her a best-actress nomination for her performance in the film she helped produce, \u201cWild.\u201d Her ambitions got larger when, under the auspices of her next company, Hello Sunshine, she created a book club and co-produced hit shows like \u201cBig Little Lies,\u201d \u201cDaisy Jones & the Six\u201d and \u201cThe Morning Show,\u201d which just returned for its fourth season on Apple TV+. In 2021, Witherspoon sold Hello Sunshine for almost a billion dollars, though she is still involved in the day-to-day operations and is the face of its hugely popular book club. \u201cI watch culture,\u201d she told me. \u201cI\u2019ll watch TikTok almost like a scientist would watch it. I want to see where the ball is going in my business.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how did a precocious teenage actress end up an entertainment-industry powerhouse, and what has she learned about herself in the process? In our wide ranging conversations, we talked about her early days in Hollywood as a young mother, the road out of her professional slump, becoming a boss \u2014 and how she\u2019s navigating the turbulent environment in Hollywood these days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

ChatGPT says: You\u2019re picking up on two overlapping things:<\/p>\n

1. Media positioning and audience alignment.
\nMainstream outlets like the New York Times lean toward their core readership\u2019s values and aesthetics. That readership generally skews urban, liberal, and culturally progressive. Celebrity profiles\u2014especially of someone like Reese Witherspoon, who has successfully rebranded herself as a producer championing women\u2019s stories\u2014play well with that audience. The tone is meant to flatter both subject and reader: \u201clook at this successful woman navigating identity, just like we all are.\u201d A right-wing politician or culture figure wouldn\u2019t get the same framing because their worldview runs counter to what the outlet assumes its audience admires. The profile would likely be adversarial, ironic, or framed in terms of controversy.<\/p>\n

2. The myth of the \u201cauthentic self.\u201d
\nHeadlines like \u201cfigured out who she really is\u201d rely on a clich\u00e9: that people discover a singular, stable core identity after a journey. In reality, as you noted, who you \u201care\u201d shifts depending on context, relationships, and time. But the fixed-identity narrative is a marketable story\u2014neat arcs sell. For celebrities especially, it\u2019s a way of packaging brand evolution (\u201cactress \u2192 producer \u2192 entrepreneur\u201d) into something digestible. The media runs with it because it reassures readers that reinvention is possible and that there\u2019s an authentic endpoint, even if philosophically that\u2019s shaky.<\/p>\n

So the fawning tone is partly audience-driven PR synergy, and partly a cultural habit of telling identity stories as if there\u2019s a final answer.<\/p>\n

Mainstream media packages these stories because they flatter both subject and audience. Readers are meant to nod along at the arc of \u201cstruggle \u2192 reinvention \u2192 triumph,\u201d while the celebrity cements her public image as both resilient and authentic. What you won\u2019t see is the same treatment for someone on the political right. A Republican figure \u201cfinding herself\u201d would be written up, if at all, as hypocrisy, reinvention for power, or a cynical pivot. The cultural gatekeepers simply don\u2019t extend the same narrative generosity.<\/p>\n

The deeper issue is the myth of the \u201cauthentic self.\u201d Headlines promise that, after turmoil, one can finally uncover who they \u201creally are.\u201d But identity isn\u2019t a buried artifact\u2014it\u2019s fluid. It shifts depending on context: mother, actor, producer, entrepreneur, divorc\u00e9e, billionaire. Witherspoon has inhabited all of these roles. Each one is \u201cwho she is\u201d in that moment, until another reinvention is required. The idea of a final, true self is a comforting fiction, but it\u2019s also marketable. It sells movies, podcasts, interviews, and book clubs.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t make Witherspoon\u2019s achievements less real. Building a billion-dollar media company is impressive. But we should recognize how the story is framed: less as an analysis of power in Hollywood and more as a morality play for the liberal, professional class\u2014proof that if you lean in hard enough, your \u201creal self\u201d will emerge, successful and sanitized.<\/p>\n

The irony is that real human identity isn\u2019t neat. It doesn\u2019t conform to act breaks. Who we are mutates as the world mutates around us. The only thing that stays the same is the media\u2019s appetite for selling the illusion of an endpoint: that elusive moment when you can say, once and for all, \u201cI\u2019ve figured out who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do I see so many fawning celebrity profiles\/essays in the MSM like this one in the NYT: “The Interview: How Reese Witherspoon Figured Out Who She Really Is“? They would never do a headline like this over a right-winger. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163754"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163795,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163754\/revisions\/163795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}