Ode To Jared

You're Jared Kushner and you learn that you've been selected as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential people. That has to feel good.

You're Jared Kushner and you learn that no less than Henry Kissinger is writing the laudatory paragraphs that will accompany your picture. That has to feel good.

You're Jared Kushner and this is what Kissinger writes about you:

hilariously lukewarm writeup by Kissinger on Jared Kushner for the TIME 100 pic.twitter.com/mZyrMjIqGW

— Katherine Krueger (@kath_krueger) April 20, 2017

You're Jared Kushner and that has to feel really, really bad.

Late afternoon update: From Vox.com, five things of note in Kissinger's Ode to Jared:

1. The entire thing is the most lukewarm of lukewarm praise, about as generic and uninspired as it comes. One academic I follow on Twitter called it “the letter of recommendation you never want an advisor to send,” which sounds about right.
2. It may have been legitimately hard for Kissinger to say much more about someone who has no formal qualifications in foreign policy or experience in government and is now occupying arguably the most important policy role in the White House. Kissinger can’t be more specific because Kushner doesn’t really have any specific accomplishments in government to point to, other than marrying astutely.
3. In private life, contra Kissinger, Kushner doesn’t have a lot of successes. His tenure as head of the New York Observer was disastrous, his family real estate company’s flagship skyscraper has low occupancy rates and a serious debt problem, and it’s been credibly reported that his dad bought his place at Harvard with a $2.5 million donation.
4. It’s doubly biting because Kissinger is famous in Washington for his ability to flatter people in power in order to gain influence over public policy. If this is the best that America’s foremost master of diplomatic compliments can do — well, that’s pretty embarrassing for Kushner.
5. That last bit, about “flying close to the sun,” is particularly delicious. It’s a reference to the Greek fable of Icarus — son of the famous inventor Daedalus, who built a pair of wings held together with wax. Icarus used his father’s invention to fly too close to the sun, which melted the wax and caused poor Icarus to plummet to his death. It’s a morality tale about hubris, the arrogant belief in your own ability to accomplish more than you can. Kissinger’s phrasing heavily implies that, in this case, Kushner is Icarus.