Did You Go To School to be a Stenographer?

A recent correspondence I had with Politico reporter Natalie Fertig regarding platforming Larry Hogan reveals the rot at the heart of liberal media. When challenged on the decision to treat a private citizen’s threats against state law as breaking news, her response was a masterclass in bureaucratic indifference. Fertig did not defend the piece’s journalistic merit. Instead, she offered a hollow recitation of gratitude, promising to take the critique “under advisement.” This interaction is not a trivial instance of poor customer service. It is a glimpse into the banal machinery that manufactures consent for authoritarianism. Fertig views her role not as a truth-teller but as a content provider, insulated from the violence she helps broadcast.

To: nfertig@politico.com, nataliefertig@gmail.com

Dear Ms. Fertig,

I am writing to question the editorial judgment behind your recent article highlighting former Governor Larry Hogan’s assertion that law enforcement will ignore state legislation. The piece treats the opinions of a private citizen who has not held public office for three years as substantive news, despite his evident inability to secure even a political patronage position during that interim.

One must ask why Politico dedicated resources to amplifying the voice of a conservative figure who has repeatedly failed to maintain political relevance or secure elected office. His recent electoral defeat and subsequent withdrawal from public life suggest a diminishing return on his political capital. Yet, you were assigned to report on his opinion that law enforcement should defy state law not as the hollow posturing of an out-of-power partisan, but as a credible policy debate on governance.

Could you please explain the rationale behind your editorial team assigning you this story? What news value exists in platforming the grievances of a political actor who the electorate and the party apparatus have effectively abandoned? Elevating such figures obscures the actual material conditions of immigration enforcement and state power by focusing on the theater and schemes of disgruntled elites rather than the realities faced by working people.

I look forward to your clarification on why the opinions of a conservative loser constitute breaking news.

Hey Spencer, thank you for your feedback. We really appreciate when readers contact us and we’ll take it under advisement.

Best,
Natalie

Natalie Fertig
States Reporter, POLITICO
nfertig@politico.com
360-448-3396

Dear Ms. Fertig,

Do not mistake my email for mere feedback or a customer service complaint. I am asking you to consider your place in power.

Your coverage is not a mirror reflecting reality but a tool actively shaping it. By amplifying the hollow threats of an aggrieved politician who has lost his mandate and his relevance, you serve specific material interests that depend on the illusion that his opinion on this topic matters. To what end this illusion serves, I cannot say, as I do not have intimate knowledge of the Politico assignment desk, but I suspect that you might. Until you confront the function your reporting plays in legitimizing these irrelevant right-wing figures, your work will remain complicit in the obfuscation of power you claim to document.

I hope you find the clarity necessary to face these truths.

Her refusal to engage with the material consequences of reporting is typical and our exchange demonstrates how institutional journalism filters out structural critique by categorizing it as consumer feedback. To the editors at these outlets, an objection to the normalization of police impunity is indistinguishable from a complaint about a typo. They operate under a delusion of neutrality that blinds them to their own ideology. By treating the political arena as a marketplace of ideas rather than a battlefield of material interests, they absolve themselves of responsibility. They believe that balancing the voices of the powerful against the powerless constitutes fairness, even when the powerful incite defiance against the law they supposedly value.

Larry Hogan represents the archetype of the aggrieved conservative loser who retains outsized influence solely through media complicity. He holds no office, wields no legal authority, and was rejected by voters. Yet, the press continues to elevate whines as if they carries the weight of a mandate. When Politico headlines his assertion that law enforcement will “ignore” legislation, they are not reporting on reality; they are attempting to manifest it. They breathe life into a defunct political career, allowing a man without a constituency to threaten the integrity of governance. This is the creation of a spectacle that obscures the actual mechanisms of power and the irrelevance of its former wielders.

The danger of this spectacle lies in the specific content being amplified. Hogan is not merely offering an opinion on tax policy; he is encouraging armed agents of the state to disregard laws. He is advocating for a localized coup by police departments against the civil administration. When journalists present this sedition as a routine political disagreement, they validate the premise that the police are an autonomous power, independent of public control. The media’s supposed view from nowhere transforms a direct threat to the rule of law into a legitimate perspective that must be weighed and considered. This is how the groundwork for authoritarianism is laid in the open columns of respectable publications.

We must recognize the violence concealed behind the sanitized language of this reporting: the collaboration between local police and ICE, a nexus that facilitates the kidnapping and caging of human beings. When Hogan invokes the specter of “violent criminals,” he is deploying a racist trope designed to justify ethnic cleansing. By repeating these claims without interrogation, the press acts as the public relations wing of a fascist deportation machine. They strip the targets of this rhetoric of their humanity, reducing them to threats that must be managed. And in so doing journalists like Fertig become a complicit partner in the state’s violence, ensuring that the public remains fearful enough to accept the brutality of the border regime.

This dynamic serves a clear material function for the ruling class. It shifts the focus from the systemic exploitation of migrant labor and the cruelty of detention to the theatrical posturing of elites. The media keeps the public engrossed in the drama of which politician is “tougher” on crime, silencing any discussion about the abolition of these coercive systems. My correspondence with Fertig illustrates that this obfuscation is not always a conscious conspiracy but often the result of professional habit. The banality of her reply proves once again that journalists are impervious to moral appeals and are indoctrinated in college and in the work place to prioritize access and conflict over truth and justice. The result is a media landscape that actively suppresses revolutionary consciousness by framing the material interests of the status quo as the only possible reality.

It must be stated, once again, fuck the press.