The Washington Post would like you to pretend along with them that they're the essence of fact-based neutrality, that they don't play favorites. Then you notice that their Sunday Arts & Style section carried a sprawling four-page spread with 10 color photographs on the glorious Rosie O'Donnell and her passionate loathing of President Donald Trump.
The Post summarized the puff piece on X: "Donald Trump's first administration took an emotional toll on Rosie O'Donnell. She didn't think she could endure a second term. This time, O'Donnell had a plan: she moved to Ireland."
So let's give Rosie credit for carrying out the threat to leave America, unlike many exquisitely sensitive celebrities.
"She's a sensitive soul, a giant exposed nerve who has posed, successfully, for most of her life and career as a brassy Long Island toughie," gushed Post arts reporter Geoff Edgers. The first Trump term "took an emotional toll on the die-hard liberal, even as she tweeted and marched and spit invective against the president every chance she got."
So at least we get the term "die-hard liberal," and the accurate note on "invective." But these only make her more lovable to the customers of The Washington Post.
She moved to Ireland for her child: "O'Donnell, 63, worried about life under an administration that has been hostile to gay rights and gender-nonconforming people in general; her youngest, 12-year-old Clay, is nonbinary." It used to be "her daughter Dakota." Then Edgers dropped a pile of obligatory "they/their" terms on Clay.
Edgers pitched O'Donnell vs. Trump as two "vivid triborough loudmouths" who could deliver "late-show bluster." He quoted Rosie attacking Trump's personal life: "Left the first wife, had an affair; left the second wife, had an affair. Had kids both times, but he's the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America."
The Post laid out a similarity here but didn't make it direct: Rosie left her first wife after four adopted kids. Rosie left her second wife after adopting one more. The second wife later committed suicide. That's not mentioned in this huge article.
Edgers isn't going to mock Rosie's moral compass. No, her problem is she cares too much. We're told, "This impulse to help -- anyone, anywhere, at whatever cost -- is a constant source of frustration for her friends."
Even now, Trump enjoys mocking Rosie, and that's somehow painted as weird while it's not weird in reverse. When the Irish prime minister came to the White House, Trump mocked Rosie in response to a question from the Real America's Voice network.
Edgers turned dramatic: "Suddenly, what had once seemed like a classic showbiz rivalry -- a Joan Crawford-Bette Davis slap fight rebooted for the reality TV era -- was beginning to feel more ominous than absurd."
Ominous? Like Trump was going to send a goon squad to rough her up? Leftists love to dish it out against Trump, but they can't seem to take it.
The Post story is accompanied by a Rosie portrait of Trump where she scrawled the words "Felon, Crook, Creep, Liar, Loser, Done." But that's not ominous?
Of course, the Post wouldn't use words that would be upsetting about Rosie's strange views, like "9/11 conspiracy theorist."
This isn't the first time Geoff Edgers has traveled to Ireland for a puff piece. In 2020, he offered the same routine, a huge Sunday tribute to leftist singer Sinead O'Connor, beloved for tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on "Saturday Night Live." She was "one of contemporary music's greatest and most original artists."
These women are very much alike -- "sensitive artists" at war with everyone The Washington Post hates.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.