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Hillary’s Press Guru Is More Hipster Than Thou

When we saw today’s Observer headline about Clinton traveling press secretary Jay Carson, we couldn’t help but smile. “Hillary’s Hard-Hitting Hipster” was the title of the story, which featured a picture of Carson wearing jeans and a blazer. We well know how the press is quick to stereotype people as hipsters. But once we read the story (burdened by the overwhelming feeling of reverse Schadenfreude we had at young Carson’s meteoric success), we realized, it’s pretty hard to argue with his hipster cred. Quoth the Observer:

• Mr. Carson wore slim jeans, a fitted striped sweater, a trim beard and black high-top Converse All Stars that, according to his close friend Beau Willimon, he spent 30 minutes scuffing in the first after purchasing to achieve a more authentically “punkified” look.

• [Carson] cast himself as something of a rebel in the khaki world of Washington operatives. He spoke longingly of his airy loft in the Fairway Building in Red Hook.
• He said that when he picked [his fiancé] up at Prospect Park during a TV on the Radio concert that he attended with his mentor, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson, “She thought I was an A-and-R guy.”
• Mr. Carson hung out downtown, at Spy bar and Don Hill’s, and engaged in what could be called an active social life.
• He tried to combine his passions for Democratic politics and music by working briefly at a political advocacy group called Music for America and attending concerts in his spare time at the Mercury Lounge.

Huh. She is a 60-year old female United States senator, and he is a 30-year-old male PR guy. And yet, they sort of come off in the exact same way. It’s a weird, unique combination of being successful, inevitable, and creepy as all hell.

Hillary’s Hard-Hitting Hipster [NYO]

Hillary’s Press Guru Is More Hipster Than Thou