vultures

I don’t want to beat this subject to death (it would be the height of hypocrisy), but seeing as it keeps coming up around me, I wanted to drop an observation.

Perusing a Massachusetts-centric e-tabloid called The Boston Broadside, one of the top articles is a post praising Charlie Kirk’s “patriotism, faith, and God’s merciful love”. Hot takes spanning the political spectrum have been done to death, and I don’t feel compelled to add to them. However, let’s pause and count:

  • How many articles were posted on The Boston Broadside about Charlie Kirk before his death, throughout the duration of his decades of life:

Zero.

  • How many articles have been posted on The Boston Broadside about Charlie Kirk in the few weeks after his death:

Three (and counting).

Charlie Kirk was surrounded by rich Republicans his entire life. He never held a career outside of spectacle, confrontation, and political performance. The media machine he dedicated his life to was fueled by tragedy and division. And now, his death is being picked to pieces for its useful parts and the rest discarded by the same machine he helped feed. The opportunity to turn him into a martyr–a turning point–is cruelly more useful to the US political apparatus than the sum of his entire life would have been, chirping to college students and chumming it up with rich politicians.