Posted by Richard Rawlinson
Not so long ago, The Independent’s left-wing young writer Johann Hari fell from being an award-winning media star when he was exposed as a self-promoting liar and cheat. The Economist was not convinced by his apology for plagiariasm.
It’s now the turn of right-wing, young digital hack Milo Yiannopoulus. His mainstream profile may not be as high as Hari’s but he’s well-known in the blogosphere. Having cut his teeth at the Telegraph (and Catholic Herald), he went on to launch The Kernel, an online magazine about technology start-up companies, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in Britain’s digital economy by Wired.
His company has just declared bankruptcy. Yiannopoulus’s detractors, of which there are many as he has a pugilistic style (he even fell out with Stephen Fry on Twitter), are no doubt gloating. Here’s The Guardian last year.
For all the precocity of a Hari or Yiannopoulus, the latter starts his redeeming process with a persuasively repentant and reflective blog in which he wonders if failure might feel like grief.
Worth a read in my opinion, here.
Finding words of comfort is tricky after a career crisis, relationship break-up or bereavement. You can say, ‘sorry to hear about your news. I sympathise at this difficult time’. But only with the career crisis can you say ‘you will come out of suffering stronger and better’ without meriting a slap across the face. Time may indeed heal, but grief is very different from self pity following injury to lifestyle, reputation, ego or bank account, self-inflicted or otherwise.
The fate of these young stars reminds me of something Scott Fitzgerald wrote about the nature of early success: ‘ The man who arrives young believes that he exercises his will because his star is shining. The man who only asserts himself at thirty has a balanced idea of what will-power and fate have each contributed, the one who gets there at forty is liable to put the emphasis on will alone. This comes out when the storms strike your craft.’ He was a writer who found an extraordinary early fame at the start of the jazz age in America… Read more »