There’s a telling scene in the Academy Award winning documentaryCitizen Four. Glenn Greenwald (hereafter GG) is sitting in a hotel room with whistleblower Edward Snowden and Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill. Cinematographer Laura Poitras is, as ever, invisible behind the camera, a fly on the wall capturing the historic moment for prosperity (oops, I mean posterity).
Snowden, the computer geek with a conscience, is earnestly explaining his selfless motives. It’s not about me, he keeps repeating. The problem with the American media today, he stresses, is that it is personality based. All this focus on celebrities distracts the American public from the real issues, like the fact that they live in a police state that controls every thought they think.
I don’t want this to be about me, Snowden insists; I want it to be bout the mechanisms of the thought police.
Meanwhile the camera catches GG in an unguarded moment. To me, it looks like he’s drooling, the dollar signs flashing before his lizard eyes.
But, he says to Snowden (and here I paraphrase), we can turn you into the biggest celebrity since Clint Eastwood! Like Clint, you’re the anti-hero every theatre-going, book-buying American has been longing for, the lone wolf who isn’t afraid of the machine.
Perhaps it’s because I view GG as a crass opportunist and a hypocrite who sold his soul to a billionaire, but I truly believe I could see the wheels spinning in his devious brain.
“Oh, the schmaltz! he seems to be thinking.
How ironic, I thought, we’re two minutes into the documentary, GG has just made his appearance, and already he’s maneuvering naive, trusting, vulnerable Ed Snowden into doing exactly the opposite of what Snowden wants to do.