Kirk is being posthumously celebrated by much of the mainstream press as a noble sparring partner for center-left politicians and pundits. Meanwhile, the very real, very negative, and sometimes violent impacts of his rhetoric and his political projects are being glossed over or ignored entirely.
Taken from another perspective, of course most media outlets are going to say he was doing politics “the right way”, you know why? They’re in the fucking media business.
The idea of endless political debate about various settled issues and a general emphasis on controversy gets them more traffic to their shitty cable news networks, their terrible fucking substacks, their quippy little microblog, their shitty little YouTube channel, and their dumb ass little streaming service. It also gets more people to buy their books.
Charlie Kirk and those like him aid this entire media ecosystem by driving traffic to his affiliated media properties for his flock of the converted as well as driving traffic to liberal media properties that seek to debunk his every specious argument.
Almost nobody that is in the media business ever seems to ask the obvious questions: did what he do with his life improve the country at all? Did it improve policies? Did it improve governance? Did it do anything besides “increase engagement” and win elections?