Culture critic: Howard Stern Goes Obsequious

Howard Stern in his new book “praises Rosie O’Donnell for her ‘wisdom and graciousness,’ applauds Lena Dunham for her ‘wisdom’ and ‘understanding,’ and touts Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘humanity’” — to the huge disappointment of Bruce Bawer at City Journal. A man who rose to fortune and fame by “routinely piercing the pretentious images of showbiz figures” and who “had no illusions about the left” in 2008 began to “socialize with many of the same celebrities at whom he once scoffed.” When he came out in support of Hillary Clinton in 2016, “his explanations made no sense; he sounded like just another Manhattan liberal.” Did he, “during all those years when he was making fun of the crème de la crème of the left-wing showbiz establishment, actually want to be one of them”? The culmination of it all was his fawning Dec. 4 interview with Hillary — “a terrible comedown for a guy who’d earned a reputation for fearless honesty.”

Media watch: CNN’s Ministry of Truth

CNN, which ironically “has a reporter on the ‘disinformation’ beat,” is now “grousing about the Christian conservative satire site the Babylon Bee, which has earned the ire of a number of liberals for making jokes at their expense,” reports National Review’s David Harsanyi. Case in point: CNN’s outraged response to the recent Bee piece headlined “Democrats call for flags to be flown at half-mast to grieve death of Soleimani.” To lefty journalists, the Bee’s “real crime” is that it “mocks all the wrong people” — after all, the media had a “decade-long love affair” with Jon Stewart’s conservative-mocking, fact-distorting “Daily Show.” More important: It’s the established media that have been “undermining their reputation and leaving millions of Americans without any reliable mainstream news organizations to count on.”

From the right: Ridiculous Ben Rhodes

“Why,” Tom Rogan sighs at The Washington Examiner, “does anyone listen to Ben Rhodes foreign policy opinions?” Rhodes, a former Obama adviser, ominously tweeted Thursday that “everything” about President Trump’s killing of Qassem Soleimani “suggests serious escalation to come.” This from a guy who whose foreign-policy “experience” was mainly pushing the Iran nuclear deal, which gave Tehran “tens of billions of dollars” without any restrictions. “All in all, Brookings fellow Shadi Hamid sums it up best: ‘It’s hard to think of another close Obama aide as un-self-aware and shameless as Ben Rhodes (and that’s saying a lot considering the competition).’ ”

Foreign desk: Why Cyberattacks Matter

The Department of Homeland Security issued a blanket warning about Iranian cyberattacks in the aftermath of the Soleimani killing — but, Jackie Schneider points out at The Washington Post, “the consequences of cyberattacks are more complicated than these warnings might suggest.” It’s “hard to use cyberattacks to achieve physical consequences, much less serious physical harm.” And there’s no evidence that “cyber-operations have successfully deterred physical attacks.” Cyber-ops “provide influence and intelligence” and hurt morale in attacked countries and may have “possible long-term costs” for businesses, financial services and elections. But the greatest danger of cyber-operations is their subtlety: They can “slow down and confuse militaries” while “drawing attention and resources away from more serious challenges.”

Conservative: The Case for Donald the Hun

“What force on earth can reform a corrupt or incompetent elite?” asks Daniel McCarthy at Spectator USA. “The answer for Christians in the dying days of the Western Roman Empire was Attila the Hun, ‘the scourge of God,’ ” whose violence “was a call to repentance.” Later thinkers pointed to a “mighty individual from outside the society that stands in need of reform” as “a source of regeneration.” And while “Donald Trump isn’t, in fact, a marauding warlord from the steppe” or “even a sanguinary Machiavellian prince,” the “very things that Trump’s detractors call his vices are his ‘barbarian’ virtues.” His metaphorical violence against the elites is “as devastating on the mental level as Attila’s was on the battlefield” to the unrepentant “architects and propagandists of two and a half decades of policies that led to insecurity, despair and death.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board