#110 - Propaganda Madness, Part 3, Side A

This week’s episode focuses on the Pentagon’s propagandist-in-chief, Sean Parnell. Parnell is someone we suspect you may never have heard of, but we think, upon thorough examination, he perfectly encapsulates a certain character type that could only really thrive in the Fourth Reich. Parnell is a self-described victim of “horrific” childhood bullying, which led him to an adolescence and young adulthood filled with self-described binge drinking, dirty living, and little awareness of what was even happening around him. That all ended with 9/11. No, really. The guy actually credits the 9/11 attacks for his political awakening and decision to enlist in the army. So he enlisted and went to Afghanistan and later bragged about how many people his unit killed.

Parnell’s affect is like that of a whinier J.D. Vance. It's like they cooked him up in the same factory as Vance, but he fell off the assembly line before production was complete. You can tell he doesn’t have the Ivy League polish the way Vance does, and he thinks that’s a good thing. But his performance is to act like he is an authentic guy who’s just as smart, if not smarter than the Ivies, when in fact he is tremendously, colossally dumb. He, of course, wrote a memoir with a “co-author” as a pathway to a political or media career before epically failing upward towards his current position as the official spokesperson for the Department of Defense.

In Side A, we set the table on Parnell and provide some much-needed context. Stay tuned for Side B, in which Don interviews a friend of the pod, Matt Farwell, about his coverage of Parnell.

Let’s Get Digging.