Lobstergate Exposes Media’s Out-Of-Touch Elite
They called it a scandal. They screamed outrage. It’s nonsense.
Reporters and TV hosts flipped out over a Defense Department line item. $22 million for lobster and ribeye in a month sounded juicy. The reaction was even juicier.
But here’s the reality. Surf and turf is a military tradition. It’s a morale boost. Troops heading to deployments get special meals. So do units stuck on long tours. Steak and seafood aren’t perks for a few brass. They’re treats for many service members.
The media mob didn’t check that. They leaned into the clickbait instead. The result was predictable. The elites look out of touch. They look like people who’ve never set foot on a base.
As the New York Post’s Editorial Board put it:
’Lobstergate’ again exposes the ignorant bias of TV’s ’best and brightest’
Late-night ’comedians’ Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Myers, along with Paul Begala and other CNN blowhards, went big for a pseudo-story Wednesday, raging about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon bigs supposedly eating high on the hog.
Oops: ’Lobstergate’ only proved that not one of the on-air geniuses, nor any of their writers or producers, knows a thing about military life.
All the smug fury was based on a news item — from noted military-journalism site TMZ! — about the Defense Department spending $22 million on lobster and ribeye steak in a single month.
If they’d bothered to check the (transparently idiotic!) assumption that all the eats were for the top brass, they’d have learned that a ’surf & turf’ fete is a longstanding military tradition, a treat for troops headed to a deployment or stuck on an extended tour, with all the gastrointestinal joy that a diet of MREs can deliver.
Social media piled on. Some posts showed it’s not new. It’s happened across administrations. That didn’t stop pundits and late-night hosts from acting like they’d uncovered corruption.
Here’s a clear example from a public post:
Here’s Michelle Obama serving ribeyes to troops as part of a surf and turf meal that has been military tradition since WWII, but mainstream press has suddenly decided is a “gotcha” for some reason. https://t.co/g5EE6qOQYS pic.twitter.com/YGZpUPBfnx
Here’s Michelle Obama serving ribeyes to troops as part of a surf and turf meal that has been military tradition since WWII, but mainstream press has suddenly decided is a “gotcha” for some reason. https://t.co/g5EE6qOQYS pic.twitter.com/YGZpUPBfnx
— Kane 謝凱堯 (@kane) March 12, 2026
Facts matter. Context matters. Tradition matters. The media missed all three. The fallout isn’t surprise. It’s a reminder: many elites live in a bubble. They cheer controversies that don’t exist. And that makes them look worse than the story ever could.