Three days before a 31-year-old male stormed the White House Correspondents Dinner, hoping to assassinate President Donald Trump and members of his cabinet, the New York Times published a 35-minute video titled: “‘The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’ Why petty theft might be the new political protest.” In it, a Times editor interviewed two other members of the media aristocracy about the moral code shared by a large swathe of young Americans.
That code justifies theft—and even violence—when harnessed to a fashionably left-wing cause. None of the participants—podcasting celebrity Hasan Piker, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, and Times opinion editor Nadja Spiegelman—expressed alarm at the glorification of crime. They smirked and giggled through the discussion, betraying a breezy indifference to lawbreaking.
It was striking enough that the Times published the video after reviewing the final cut. The paper was not embarrassed by the participants’ ignorance and entitlement. Nor was it troubled, apparently, by their debate over whether the December 2024 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was “actually effective political action” or merely—and disappointingly—effective “political consciousness-raising.”
But after the assassination attempt on Trump on April 25 by yet another young megalomaniac, one might have thought that the Times would want to distance itself from its hipster commentators and their ends-justify-the-means morality.
It apparently feels no such discomfort, however, and thus has left the video online. That is fortunate. The exchange offers a more revealing window into left-wing political violence than the latest would-be assassin’s predictably disjointed manifesto. When future archeologists seek to date the moment that the demise of the West became inevitable, this artefact of peak decadence will be a strong contender.
The video’s most memorable feature is the visual contrast between the participants’ studied downtown chic and their professed identification with what Piker calls the “masses.” Tolentino’s makeup is flawless, accentuating her exotic feline beauty; her nails gleam with shell-pink lacquer; her carefully styled waves glow with tawny highlights; her low-cut denim tank top, jeans, and high-heeled boots signal urban sophisticate. This outfit may not be ideally suited to organizing the proletarian “sabotage and, sort of, engagement with property destruction” she evokes with wistful nostalgia. But it fits perfectly in the all-white Brooklyn loft where the interview was filmed.
Piker sports a powder-blue, long-sleeved Ralph Lauren shirt, complete with polo pony logo. His tennis shoes are by Adidas, the very embodiment of the “system of global capital” that he claims to want to overthrow, complete with allegations of labor abuses in its Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indonesian factories.
Admittedly, Spiegelman’s plumpness might earn her some demerits when trying to enter a Soho nightspot, but her Times affiliation can do wonders to overcome deviations from the optimal clubbing look.
Hellbound and Down 