Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and the Modern Whistleblower
Why should we take Gladwell seriously on this? Why does anyone think he is qualified? He is a windbag famous for writing the most base and insulting form of literary clickbait: pop science novels that tell a series of &#x27;just so&#x27; fables which add up to give the reader a satisfying sense of the world which is completely opposed to the world the way it is. He is a propaganda artist at best, insidious at least.<p>And now he writes on Snowden, omits hugely important pieces of the story, warps the narrative  in service of his hip contrarianism and unsurprisingly misses the point completely but distracts with cute anecdotes about Ellsberg.<p>I guess the question we should be asking ourselves is why is he given a spot to write a long-form article like this in the New Yorker? Why does anyone still take him seriously at this point? Has intellectualism in this country truly failed this hard?<p>Perhaps a good thing could come from this: people who have done their due diligence and read about Snowden will read this and recognize Gladwell for the hack he is.