‘A Great, Great, Great Man’: The Cringey Gushing Over Jimmy Carter

Are we all talking about the unseemliness and death watch that Jimmy Carter has received?

Human beings are known to react in this manner when they see themselves doing something in bad taste or otherwise unworthy. We tell a dirty joke to a child, break the ice in a reception desk, and then we start turning on the motor mouth in our shame. As members of the nation’s media corps wait for him to speed up and croak, we hover ghoulishly above the grave of a famous stranger for endless hours. We then wander the streets of the small town to find someone who hasn’t been interviewed by the BBC.

So we blather. We talk balls. We will say whatever is necessary to fill in the silence that could draw attention to our shabby ways. We say things like … oh I don’t know … like, Jimmy Carter “moves humanity forward every single day.” Or maybe he did. “the sweetest and best parts of our character.” We might even describe Jimmy Carter as “probably the most intelligent, hard-working, and decent man to have occupied the Oval Office in the 20th century.”

The first quote was translated into concrete terms. “I really, really like him,” Maria Shriver, a former TV newsreader, is the inspiration for this article. Her heritage is Kennedy-born and Schwarzenegger-married, so words don’t suit her. The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius is the second, and he shared his outrageous sentiments during a sleepy chin-wag on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Kai Bird, left-wing historian and journalist, was the author of the third. He is a great writer. He is a master of words. In fact, he wrote a whole biography about Jimmy Carter. It is possible to expect him not to be so smart.

Unavoidably, there will be a certain amount of one-upmanship. Public commentators can be so competitive. Mia Farrow went on Twitter—it’s not clear she ever gets off—and called Carter a “great, great man.” “Hold my beer,” Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist, said it metaphorically. (He doesn’t seem to me to be a huge drinker. Kristof tweeted Carter: “a great, great, great man,” Mia Farrow beat her two greats by beating him with a third. Twitter may pay him by his word. (Thanks, Elon.) Kristof also tweeted Carter “leaves the planet so much more better