Life & Wisdom Quote by L. Neil Smith

There is a sly insult embedded in Smith's observation: the mass media aren’t just reporting on power, they’re dressing up as it. The line lands because it doesn’t accuse journalists of simple bias or error; it accuses them of role confusion. "Look and act" is doing double work. It points to the cosmetic theater of authority (the suits, the set design, the choreographed outrage) and to behavioral imitation: issuing pronouncements, setting agendas, policing boundaries, rewarding allies, punishing enemies. The medium becomes a parallel branch of government, but without ballots.

Smith, a libertarian-leaning science fiction writer, is writing from a worldview that treats institutional expansion as a creeping, self-justifying organism. In that frame, "elected and appointed officials" isn’t neutral description; it’s a warning label. Officials are people with coercive power and incentives to protect it. If media figures begin to resemble them, the implied fear is that they’ll adopt the same reflexes: access-as-currency, insider language, managed narratives, and a preference for stability over truth when the two collide.

The subtext is also about legitimacy. Democracies grant authority through procedure. Media authority is supposed to be earned through credibility, but credibility can be manufactured through proximity to power and performance of seriousness. Smith’s punchline is that the performance is winning. The line anticipates our present, where anchors brand themselves like candidates, pundits operate like partisan operatives, and "public service" becomes a rhetorical costume for influence. It’s less a media critique than a caution about any institution that starts believing its own lighting.