Panties were added across the nation’s capital, as employees at the Washington Post learned Friday that their paper would not officially endorse Democrat Kamala Harris. I phrase it that way because you’d have to be drunk and dead not to know who the Post supports; there was less of a chance of columnist Jennifer Rubin winning a trivia contest against an aborted zygote than there was of Donald Trump getting a remotely honest story in the pages of DC’s favorite bird cage liner. But the left made it seem as though the idea of where the paper’s loyalty lies will be a mystery for the ages, with future historians left only to speculate wildly.
These people at the Post truly are horrible. What a spoiled group of pampered crybabies.
They should be thanking God they have jobs, as untalented as they are. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the rag for his pocket change - $250 million. Being owned by one of the three wealthiest people on the planet – where he falls on that list depends on how his stocks did that day – has its advantages. For example, you don’t really have to worry if your paycheck will clear.
Also, the idea of accountability gets a little perverted.
According to the Associated Press, the Post lost $77 million last year. I don’t even know how that’s possible, but it was nothing for the paper. Democracy may die in darkness, but a money-losing business can live forever off Daddy Primebucks’ stock portfolio.
The paper has done nothing but lose money under Bezos, but he’s got the money to lose, right? But the funny thing about the rich is many of them are some of the tightest-fisted people I’ve ever met. Some are generous, don’t get me wrong, but while many of them cut checks the size of city budgets to charities, they will calculate 15 percent down to the penny for lunch.
I don’t know where Bezos falls, but I also don’t blame him for not enjoying losing money simply because people running his paper realize he’s got more. You don’t get wildly successful by being reckless with assets.
The brain trust running the Post has increased its web traffic from 101 million per month to 50 million. I’m not sure I could have done that without trying, and even then, I doubt I could’ve failed that hard. Whatever they’re paid, it’s too much.
The reporters and editors aren’t any better. They produce garbage no one wants to read and very little related to anything that constitutes “news.” The opinion pages aren’t much better. They are the Bob’s Country Bunker of media. There, they have “both kinds” of thought, left-wing and ultra-left-wing (with a dash of holier-than-thou anti-Trumpism tossed in for good measure).
Ultimately, they’re all guilty of being uninteresting and predictable, the only yardstick they should be measured. No one wants to read lightly edited Democratic Party press releases or warmed-over “hot takes” that constitute struggling with a thesaurus to find new, only semi-plagiarized ways of calling Trump “Hitler.”
Jeff Bezos proves all the money in the world can’t buy relevance.
The editors are responsible for the Post’s demise; it is their job to prevent the idiots who work for them from being discovered as idiots.
This brings us to the real reason journalism is dead: Watergate. It was not the story of Watergate, which was a legitimate news story, but Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They became rich and famous from that story and even made a movie about them. While Robert Redford as Woodward might not have been a stretch, anyone but a bridge troll as Bernstein was a generous wet kiss.
They became heroes to aspiring journalists, but worse, they became models. Ben Bradlee kept them in check, not letting them run a story unless they met certain standards. He’s gone, and the people who wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein are not the gatekeepers, the ones supposed to uphold standards, and they are not. They fear their subordinates being triggered by something they don’t like or understand being covered in the paper. Management has fired editors for upsetting protected class and special designation reporters, even when the only people expressing the upset were Karens.
No ship will sail well when the captain lives in fear of the purser.
Bezos can afford to piss them all off because Bezos can afford anything. If the Washington Post had a mass exodus over this (a few people have resigned, like someone with the title “editor-at-large,” which is a made-up title with little to no responsibilities), he could hire more, fill the paper with wire copy, or just laugh about losing something likely only worth $100 million today. He can then roll over on his $500 million super yacht, light a cigar with a $100 bill, and take comfort in the fact that he likely recouped that much in his net worth in the time it took to do it.
Bezos doesn’t need the Post, but the Post needs someone like Bezos. Only the super-rich have the money to throw away on a vanity project, and that’s what the paper has become; that’s what most of the media has become. To hell with them.
It’s no mystery who the Washington Post editorial board supports this election; it’s the Democrats. Right now, that person is Kamala Harris, but it doesn’t matter who that person is – the Post is an appendage of that party. I’ll leave you to decide which appendage to use. And if you can’t choose without being told what to think by a group of leftist editors in fear for the jobs, do the world a favor and don’t vote.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.