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This Isn’t About Rosebud, David Ellison

Antitrust law exists so that a free press and an open market never hang on the temperament of one well-meaning billionaire.

The heir to one of the largest fortunes on earth, who currently runs a billion-dollar media colossus, David Ellison has come hat in hand to New York Times readers asking for their sympathy. He would like, he shares in the op-ed, for us to understand his heart, and imagine him as the child he once was who simply loved movies, and wants only to make people feel what he felt in the dark. He’s a would-be Alfredo threading the projector in Cinema Paradiso! He’s a keeper of the flame! He also, he makes clear in the midst of this saccharine plea, a voter of both parties.

These points miss the mark.

Ellison, so buffeted by billions and flatterers, embarrasses himself. He cannot imagine that the public actually cares about law, statutes, power, or really about anything except him, his politics, whether he can be “trusted” as a steward of CNN. The essay’s thesis is “it’s all about me,” which of course is part of the problem. Research on power shows that those who wield it cannot actually perceive others’ interests and minds. One researcher has compared excessive power to traumatic brain injury; and Ellison appears to be a case study.

But why did he write it? The reason Ellison is so desperate is that 12 state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, have sued to block the Paramount–Warner........

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