The Media Flips on Gay Facebook Mogul Chris Hughes

For sometime now, the press has been sweet on the young and handsome openly gay entrepreneur, Chris Hughes, who was paid millions of dollars for cofounding Facebook. But now, the media has flipped the script and has come down hard on the 31-year-old Harvard graduate and his equally handsome husband, Sean Eldridge, who attempted to run for congress in New York.

On Tuesday, the Daily Beast's James Kirchick wrote a scathing piece about the power couple, taking aim at Hughes for his 2012 purchase of the mainstay liberal magazine the New Republic and then reportedly running it into the ground. Last week, the publication underwent a huge shakeup after its top editors Franklin Foer and Leon Wieseltier announced they were leaving over Hughes' new direction for the magazine. Soon after that, most of the New Republic's editorial staff parted ways as well.

Kirchick details the media's perception of Hughes up until now, pointing out he, along with Eldridge, was often lauded as a businessman and mogul, and the couple ended up on the cover of the Advocate's "40 Under 40" issue in 2011. The men were also praised for their involvement in the Democratic Party - Hughes worked on the Obama campaign in 2008 and the couple have hosted fundraisers in their 4,000-square-foot $5 million SoHo loft for Democratic bigwigs such as Nancy Pelosi and Andrew Cuomo.

But all of the darling perception has gone out the window, and Kirchick writes, "former TNR writers and the rest of the media establishment are racing to denounce Hughes." He adds:

...the signs that he [Hughes] would destroy The New Republic as we knew it were clear for anyone willing to take off their ideological blinders. For behind the seemingly accomplished, smart, and creative prodigy that supposedly is Chris Hughes lies a deeply insecure man with few accomplishments to his name and a heavy burden to prove his self, not to mention net, worth. Hughes' wealth and status owe little to his ingenuity as a supposed Facebook "co-founder" but rather his luck at being in the right place at the right time.

Kirchick then writes Hughes happened to be at the right place at the right time with regards to Facebook, adding that he is not a programmer, or a coder, but has the social skills that his roommates, Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, lacked.

"By his own admission, Hughes' main job for Facebook was 'customer service.' $700 million, the rough amount that Hughes earned when he cashed out of the company in 2007, is a pretty good take for a glorified call-center operator," Kirchick wrote.

Kirchick doesn't spare anything when writing about Hughes' husband and his failed attempt to run for congress:

Even by the already money-drenched standards of American politics, the Eldridge campaign was a jaw-dropping spectacle to behold. In preparation for a campaign, Eldridge established Hudson River Ventures, essentially a vote-buying apparatus masquerading as an economic-development project, to win over small-business owners and their employees. He then traipsed around the district dispensing "investments" ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 to local companies. The couple then bought a property in the town of Shokan, in New York's 19th District, just months after Eldridge told the Times that it was their original mansion, in the 18th, where "we put down roots, where we want to have a family."

That's not all; Kirchick saves the best for last, writing:

Hughes and Eldridge are not "role models for a future generation of... gay people," as The Advocate absurdly stated. They are little more than entitled brats who, like most fabulously wealthy arrivistes who attain their fortunes through sheer luck rather than hard work, are used to getting everything they want, when they want it, and throw temper tantrums when they don't.

The Daily Beast isn't the only publication to rail against the couple. The Washington Post went after Hughes as well in a piece titled "When Did Chris Hughes Become the Worst Person in the World?" Read that here. The New York Times also has a story called "Revolt at the New Republic," which you can read here.