Politics & Power Quote by Brit Hume

The lapel pin is doing a lot more work here than a tiny piece of enamel should. Hume frames the controversy as a morality play about class and cultural power: not patriotism versus skepticism, but “some in journalism” versus everyone else. By choosing the word “crept,” he implies an insidious drift rather than a principled stance, turning what could be a legitimate editorial debate into a symptom of institutional rot. Elitism becomes the charge that can’t be disproven, only denied.

The phrase “played out perfectly” is a neat bit of rhetorical jiu-jitsu. It suggests the lapel-pin flap didn’t merely happen; it revealed something essential and already true. That’s the subtext: the pin isn’t a distraction from real reporting, it’s a litmus test that exposes contempt for ordinary displays of national belonging. And “these little American flag lapel pins” miniaturizes the object to make the objection look fussy and precious. If you’re bothered by something so “little,” the problem must be you.

Context matters: the pin debate peaked in the post-9/11 and Iraq War era, when symbolic patriotism was heavily policed and cable news turned optics into argument. Hume’s move aligns with that ecosystem’s broader strategy: recast newsroom norms (distance, neutrality, discomfort with performative gestures) as snobbery, then position the critic as the voice of the commons. It’s less about pins than about delegitimizing a press corps by portraying it as culturally alien to the people it covers.