Wednesday 2/26/25
Running around getting various things tended to, but I saw the news that Jeff Bezos--a spectacularly bad sub-human--sent the members of The Washington Post's editorial team what you see summarized below in his own words, in which he said that the paper's opinion section will now only focus on free markets (whatever that means) and personal liberties, and those in the opinion department could go along with that or be fired.
Isn't that rich? "You can only allow pieces about personal liberties to run--and we all know what that's code for--but I'm taking yours away, so far as your job goes."
You can't lead a chapter, by the way, ace newspaper mogul--that's a mixed metaphor. And you can't own a direction, jackass. I know--ownership is everything in this world. Except when it's not.
What's also amusing about this is that he makes it sound like now-former opinion editor--the main person in the opinion room--David Shipley was seriously conflicted and had some heart-rending crisis of faith and torment until finally, at long last, he said couldn't continue on and resigned.
Don't you love the bit, too, where Bezos says that if the answer isn't "Hell yes" then basically it's "Get the fuck out of here."
People don't read. I have published more op-eds than anyone ever has who is not on staff somewhere. That's a fact. All of this is almost completely dead. Why? We've covered that in-depth many times in this four million word journal, but what it comes down to more than anything is this: Hardly anyone has anything worth reading (instead you have people like The Washington Post's Stephanie Merry in the nonfiction arena; goodness knows we've talked about fiction many times) and no one reads. If there were things worth reading by people with amazing minds and remarkable writing ability then we'd see if people would read. That's why I'm trying. In part.
But the idea that conservatives--who Bezos is anally tongue-thrusting--are going to read The Washington Post is laughable. There's not much worse than the Post as a newspaper reading experience as it is. The Boston Globe, perhaps. Similar. We'll get to the Globe's opinion section soon, as I suggested a little while ago. It's coming.
This is getting scary, isn't it? People will say Nazi this and Nazi that, but that's wrong. You know what this is becoming akin to? The Soviet state of the 1920s and 1930s. That's increasingly turning into the historical analogue.
My money is on current Washington Post deputy opinion editor Michael Larabee, who we have seen to be a massive bigot and a caught-red-handed thief in these pages, taking over as boss--well, sort of--of the Post's opinion section, given that he has the moral character of a lamprey, so let's just put that earlier entry out there again.
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