Gavin and Vogue Mag, Sittin’ in a Tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G… – PJ Media

He’s “embarrassingly handsome.” He’s “lithe, ardent, energetic.” He is “at ease with his own eminence.” This sounds like the writing of a sixteen-year-old girl in the full-tilt grip of a crush for the ages, you know, the true and eternal love that no one else in the world has ever experienced and that you couldn’t possibly understand, but it’s actually Maya Singer, an apparent adult who is a contributing editor at Vogue magazine.

On Sunday, Singer penned over 5,000 words of some of the purplest prose American journalism has ever seen as she cued up Gavin Newsom as the magazine’s choice for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. In lavishing the most fulsome of praise on Newsom, Singer not only sounds like a teen girl with a massive crush, but more ominously, she recalls totalitarian encomia of praise for the beloved leader. Funny how similar those two can be: both regard the object of their affections with a completely uncritical eye.

In Singer’s telling, Newsom is not the pretty-boy nepo-baby (his aunt was married to Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law) destroyer of California whose hard-left policies led to a mass exodus from the state. Rather, he is “presidential.” He is “Kennedy-esque.” He has a “stunning wife and four adorable kids.” He walks with “the executive strut of a self-made millionaire.” He “must drive Trump nuts.” In fact, “the only thing standing athwart Donald Trump’s will to power is Gavin Newsom.”

Singer is just getting warmed up. She assures you that, contrary to what you might think, “Gavin Newsom is a person with frailties and failings.” Knock me over with a feather! Nevertheless, Singer hastens to assure us, Newsom is a sort of god: “As he spoke, late-summer sun slanted in through the windows, bathing Newsom in an oh so California magic-hour glow.” In the presence of the great man himself, Singer faltered, finding herself “having a hard time taking in the man. His actual molecular reality. Immaculate. Fantastic at gab, like a windup doll.”

Alas, the object of her awe and affection proved elusive: “Newsom’s lanky frame was folded onto a sofa a bit too low-slung for him. This made him lean back—away from me.” Newsom’s oh-so-blessed wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, has to cajole him into setting aside his deity now and again: “I remind him, You don’t always have to be the savior.” 

Back in 1936, the Soviet poet Zhambyl Zhabayev published a poem entitled “Song About Stalin,” which began with this:

Stalin-Sun! For our happiness, may you live forever in the Kremlin,
We bring offerings to you — our songs, our hearts, and our flowers.
In the whole wide world, on this earthly sphere of man,
No one is more important for all humanity than you.

Then there’s “Friendly Father,” a 2024 North Korean propaganda song about Kim Jong Un that surprised everyone (probably the North Koreans most of all) when it went viral on TikTok:

Let’s sing about Kim Jong Un
Our great leader
Let’s boast about Kim Jong Un
Our friendly father
 
Warm-hearted, like your mother
Benevolent, like your father
He is holding his 10 million children in his arms
And taking care of us with all his heart…

From Lenin to Kim Jong Un, the cult of personality is an indispensable hallmark of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. If you’re setting a regime that demands absolute obedience and allows for no other allegiances, even to God, then setting up your leader as a kind of infallible demigod can help foster the blind obedience that the regime needs to stay in power.

This is the sort of thing that Americans used to ridicule. Ronald Reagan famously told a joke about how an American was boasting to a Russian that he could go into the White House, see the president of the United States and criticize him to his face. The Russian replied that he, too, had that freedom: he could go into the Kremlin, see the Soviet premier, and criticize the president of the United States to his face.  

Now, however, if this Vogue magazine piece is any indication of a trend, the American left has embraced the same idolatry of the leader that afflicts totalitarian regimes. This should surprise no one, as the American left has in recent years grown increasingly authoritarian and intolerant of dissent. The idolatry of the leader, even a slapdash, all-hat-no-cattle type like Newsom, was inevitable. We can only hope that leftists never get the chance to force Americans into the same ridiculous adulation of this man that Vogue indulged in this week.