Flaming The Washington Post

Hello.

As editor in chief and proprietor of your new alternative news source…

… it is my duty to inform you about the ongoing crap you have been enduring from the Post, an otherwise fine publication, the one whose owner insisted would not endorse a presidential candidate this year.

When I was a kid, living in The Bronx, we had the New York Post delivered to our house every day. I would read it only sporadically (it was not a wonderful paper and had a sleazy tabloid feel to it) but every day I would turn to what is now called the op-ed page, to read the political cartoon drawn by Herblock. The New York Post was a far inferior product to today’s Washington Post, but in one sense at least it was superior.

I was not a “liberal” at the time. I was barely, even, a “human.” I was ten. What I did know was that this guy, Herblock, unnecessarily attached identifying labels to too many people — “Nixon,” for example — but had strong opinions, and they tend to side with the Little Guy. They had the weight of righteous indignation. They made you think and maybe realign your thoughts. That’s my favorite Herblock cartoon, above. He drew it to denounce McCarthyism, a term he coined, in the 1950s. He was fearless, and absolutely clear and unyielding in his politics.

The publisher of the New York Post at the time was a woman named Dorothy Schiff, a committed liberal, a socialite, an heiress and the most influential female newspaper publisher in the country until Katharine Graham arrived. Mrs. Schiff hired liberal, truth-speaking columnists like James Wechsler and Max Lerner and reporters like Murray Kempton and Pete Hamill. And her political views were eloquently transmitted to the page. Herblock was employed by The Washington Post, but his cartoons were syndicated, and Mrs. Schiff published them every day.

My point is that even as a ten year old, I knew where my hometown newspaper stood. It was always roughly the same place, and they stood there unapologetically: Align with the people, not with the plutocrats, the fascists, the reactionaries. Nobody complained. It was what the newspaper was. If you disagreed with their views, there were alternative papers for you to buy.

In the 1980s and 1990s, things started to change. Newspaper began to face financial hardships. Many, many of them died. Some capitulated to marketing pressures. A certain pandering theory of journalism began to take hold: That in this harsh new market, it was important for each newspaper to present alternative views. Divergent views. Conflicting views, however anathema to the paper’s general ethics they might be.

There was a 1960s Supreme Court term for defending and protecting fearless journalism, “absence of malice,” which somehow morphed into “Absence of Balance.”

Absence of Balance became a journalistic crime. We had to pacify divergent views, to keep our readers. Otherwise, we’d perish.

And here we are today, in the middle of a war of opinions, with democracy at stake. And here we are with The Washington Post running nakedly reactionary cartoons like this one by Michael Ramirez, their designated, dedicated, hand-picked conservative syndicated cartoonist.

So, let’s consider this for a moment.

The team of Harris-Walz did not espouse “defunding the police.” They were not in favor of “open borders.” “Equity over equality” means nothing. They were not opposed to “free speech.” What, exactly, are the dreaded “mandates”? Harris - Walz were not “far left” — they campaigned with Liz Cheney. And so forth. It’s just spewing right-wing talking points, the ones that threw the election to Trump out of ignorance and misplaced fear. Here’s a recent poll result: The highest, most knowledgeable consumers of political news voted for Harris plus six. The lowest, the dimwits who simply paid attention to the screaming headlines, voted Trump plus nineteen.

I have no complaint with Ramirez expressing his opinion, even though I disrespect his opinion. I do think think The Wapo should not be running it. Not now. We are at war. In her grave, Dorothy Schiff rolls. Counterclockwise. Widdershins. Leftward.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll, which is, mercifully, not about politics:

See you tomorrow with the Weekend Gene Pool.