It’s time to break the silence and let it all burn. Christian Stephen remembers Michael Hastings.
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Recently on my way through one of many airports on the way to an assignment, I stopped in a Hudson News bookstand. Eyeing the options, I stopped on a book called “The Last Magazine” by Michael Hastings. Having followed Michael as a journalist and writer for months before his tragic car crash in Los Angeles in 2013, I was ecstatic that I would once more be able to have his company on a trip.
Michael was one of the last great journalists, working from his start at Newsweek through a two-year assignment corresponding from Baghdad and ultimately “settling” (a kind word for the work he produced during this time) as a contributor to Rolling Stone, the Young Turks and Buzzfeed.
His reporting covered, among many things, drone strikes, Bowe Berghdahl (before the hullabaloo we are now uncovering), Generals McChrystal and Petraus (Hastings article being the very one that forced Obama’s hand to dismiss McChrystal), The NSA and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. His work is arguably some of the most unflinching, visceral and bare-knuckled reporting I have ever come across.
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Before leaving for an assignment to Baghdad, Iraq, I had been given Michael’s book I Lost My Love In Baghdad by a well meaning but slightly irony proof friend. Reading it I was astounded by not only the honesty with which he poured himself onto the pages, but also the pure, unbridled fury of a man who wasn’t happy with how the world worked. Michael Hastings wanted to speak with a manager, and if they weren’t coming down to see him, he was going to kick a few doors down.
Not content to languor in the chummy, back scratch circle jerk that defines modern day political journalism, Michael reported for his readers and wasn’t beholden to any authority other than his own warped, abrasive yet astoundingly compassionate moral compass.
A clash with a Wall Street Journal reporter about whether or not to report how she had used her audience with Obama to pull out an Obama-like sock puppet and parade it in front of the commander in chief, the little sock puppet begging for an interview, did not go well. She accused him of not adhering to the unspoken rules of campaign “off the record” agreements between journalists, a strange sycophantic camaraderie meaning that those involved didn’t rock the boat lest they hinder their own access. She berated him for not playing by the “rules”.
He simply responded, “At least I don’t work for Rupert Fucking Murdoch”.
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After finishing the book in less than three hours, I began thinking about what it means to be an irreverent, honest man in the 21st century and how important it is now more than ever, to continue the calling of iconoclasts, idol snatchers and king slayers.
To pass it on to our children, and each other.
The truth is, we’re living in a time of eggshells.
Defamation lawsuits, politically correct paranoia and a generation of young people being taught to masquerade questions with an uneasy silence.
A time where educators reign unquestioned, governments are set loose through intimidation and a media firestorm of tedium is invading our every waking second.
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CNN has bought out honesty, contentment is sponsored by Pfizer, and our integrity is on loan from the Bible. We are living in the middle of an advertising holocaust where everything is neatly packaged and squeaky clean – granted clemency from an inquisition that is our duty to carry out every day.
Now more than ever, it’s vital that we encourage, preserve and exercise the only thing we have of our own. Our incisive, disturbing and brutal observations of the world we live in.
Mark Twain said, “Irreverence is the champion of liberty, and it’s only true defense”, and from the beginning of history, humanity has always been at its most extraordinary and dynamic when we have had something to kick against.
Hunter S. Thompson had Nixon, Lenny Bruce had censorship, Baudelaire had France, Christopher Hitchens had the church, Bill Hicks had the Gulf War and Michael had hypocrisy.
Our enemy is how we see others and ourselves, our villain is our identity and our war is one of self-dissection and the never-ending temptation to navel gaze.”
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Entering the second decade of the 21st century, it’s becoming clearer that we are no longer facing an enemy of a singular face or ideal. As the men of this time, we are tasked with confronting the most volatile issue yet to make its permanent mark.
Self-Censorship.
Our enemy is how we see others and ourselves, our villain is our identity and our war is one of self-dissection and the never-ending temptation to navel gaze.
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The past was defined by a whiplash, frenetic push towards information and enlightenment. Wading through ignorance and making dangerous discoveries, starting wars and signing treaties, breaking new ground and creating technological marvels. The scars of our history evident, but vindicated by the distance we’ve come. However as we approach the new reality of surviving in the 21st century, we are beginning to realize that, with fewer and fewer practical discoveries to be made, the conversation is bending inwards. In a climate of complacency, there are fewer and fewer watchmen and provocateurs to question the direction we find ourselves marching towards.
The insecurity rooted in the “they theory” (What will they say? What will they think?) has no place in our future, our only concern should be simple.
Did we get the truth out of “them” and each other?
Now more than ever, it’s vital to strip away the saccharine pleasantries and cut close to the bone, to edge closer and closer to the raw nerve of our public officials, heroes, educators, industry leaders, spin doctors and bureaucrats.
By no means is this a general blitzkrieg on decency.
The mark of a good man has always been the balance of justice and mercy. Feeling the weight of the steel, and striking with the flat of the blade. To nurture critical thinking yet encourage a compassionate hand.
However, there are times that mercy is substituted with apathy, justice traded for convenience and lenience switched with sycophancy.
As fathers and brothers, it’s our responsibility to not only be an example to our sons, but to each other.
The role of irreverence is often glorified and mistaken as rebellious, however the true calling of being an independent man is mastering the ability to think logically and freely as well as calling into question the barrage of paper thin opinions and rules being constantly fed to our culture.
The irreverent man is not noble because of his apathy; he’s noble because he represents the complete opposite.
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The irreverent man is not noble because of his apathy; he’s noble because he represents the complete opposite. Just because political TV pundits scream and detonate capillaries live on air about Benghazi, Obama or Veterans, does not make for a “dangerous thinker”. It makes for a sensationalist car crash that cheapens the vision of those who genuinely care and weakens the trust of our culture in what was once a hallowed position.
The position of the man who wouldn’t roll over for anyone unless he was convinced his body weight would serve a purpose with integrity.
The man who cares so deeply and ravenously that the only coping mechanism that serves his own self preservation is unbridled irreverence and gallows humour in the face of an oncoming storm of mediocrity. Brass knuckles covered in velvet.
Court Jesters with wives, sons, daughters and a conviction that refuses to be placated by second-rate social diplomacy and pandering.
In an age of tiptoeing around the questions that belong in the firing line, it is imperative that we find the china shop and secure our horns.
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Photo credit: Cami Macaya Palma/flickr
Tell it like it is. We are starving for a reality to be shouted out that shatters complacency and penetrates to the marrow on one’s bones. This is just the beginning.
This should bring some interesting responses …. I’m an old guy who used to be a hippie…. we wrote the book on this stuff.