Get Me Rewrite.

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Hello.

In the last two days, The Gene Pool gained huge fistfuls of new subscribers. It happened after I published the Weekend column, on Saturday. Basically, the column said that the top management team of The Washington Post — owner Jeff Bezos and his primary core of lickspittles — are paramecia. Spineless sacs of goo. Pusillanimous, prevaricating milksops. Self-serving, chicken-hearted hypocrites. Quavering cowards. And so forth. It evidently struck a nerve.

A startling percentage of my many brand-new subscribers (the exact number is proprietary but it is elephantine) appended notes saying that they had just canceled their Post subscriptions, and were using a fraction of that money to become paid subscribers of The Gene Pool.

Hm.

This is quite a new responsibility for me. I shall try to do justice by you.

Voila. You are witnessing today the birth of a new newspaper, right here, right now, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Gene Pool. It shall be called The Washington Pist. It is an alternative news site for people pissed off at The Washington Post for having cravenly declined to endorse a presidential candidate, even though our country faces a once-in-a-century Manichean choice between good and evil. To the pain and anger of the staff, the Post honchos decided to sit this one out, quite evidently for fear of offending Donald Trump and incurring his wrath, in case he wins.

Welcome, subscribers. As a new investor, you have every right to know what kind of a newspaper you are now aligned with.

Here is our mission statement:

Up yours, The Washington Post.

And here is our more detailed plan:

No more sane-washing! Instead, crazy-ass finger painting! The Washington Pist home page will never have anything like this perplexing, besides-the-point main headline, as The Washington Post did yesterday after Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden jingoistic xenophobic White supremacist hate fest: “Some billionaires, CEOs hedge bets as Trump vows retribution.”

On that same day, The Washington Pist’s main headline would have been:

“Trump Rally Apparently Designed by Albert Speer, as Filmed by Leni Riefenstahl.”

Also, The Washington Pist will have a regular “separated at birth?” feature. Here is our first one:

Stephen Miller

and:

Heinrich Himmler

The New York Times will no longer have a monopoly on Ethicist columns. The Washington Pist will have one, too. To avoid a trademark infringement lawsuit, we will call him The Ethipist. Here is The Ethipist’s first question and answer.

Q: “I have been married 25 years to a wonderful man who treats me well. Our marriage is built on mutual trust and respect. Paul is blind, but robust and sharp as a tack. Our sex life is splendid. The only disagreement we have is political: I am a loyal Democrat and Paul is an ardent Trump supporter. I am filling out our mail-in voting ballots today. Would it be ethical for me to tell him I am casting his vote for Trump, but really voting for Harris?”

Ethipist: “Sure, that’s fine.”

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The Washington Pist will not be afraid to shout truth to power! For example, we would shout this one at Donald Trump at a press conference (we will obtain credentials): “Sir, do you agree with the court judgment that your legal associate Rudy Giuliani defamed two Georgia election workers, forcing him to give them all his worldly possessions, right down to his nicer underpants? Do you denounce and refute what Mr. Giuliani said about these two ladies, and if, not, would you please repeat his calumny, verbatim, into the microphone right now, with feeling?”

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Who will be running The Washington Pist? I will, with some help. I am hereby and herein trawling for co-conspirators. I will publish guest editorials or scoops by professional news persons who, shall we say, might not love The Washington Post as much as they did before The Great Reader Betrayal. Unlike The Washington Post, the Washington Pist will happily print stories under pseudonyms, pseudonyms whose identity will never be revealed by the executive editor, me, even under threats of prison. I learned chutzpah from the best, Katharine Graham. Let them imprison a 73-year-old Grandpa!

How will these patriotic Americans with stories to tell find me under the most secure conditions? THESE ARE PROFESSIONAL REPORTERS AT THE TOP OF THEIR GAME. They will find me.

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One more thing. Once The Washington Pist is off and running and successful and earning millions from reader subscriptions, hiring people, holding expensive, tax-exempt staff meetings in fashionable restaurants, etc., I will sell the entire operation for $36.45 to the one person I can trust: Donald Graham, Katharine’s son, the second best publisher I ever worked for. He will have to buy me lunch, though.

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Okay, The following item was sent to me by my friend and colleague Horace LaBadie, who found it quite by happenstance. It is a poem written in 1988 by a man named Ed Justin, apparently for the entertainment of his children. At the time, Donald Trump was a mere annoying dust mote in the public eye; he was engaged in a private, phenomenal effort to lose his fortune through idiocy.

When it was written, this poem had nothing to do with Trump. But look at it now, people. It is on the mark AND right in season. Poetry is beauty, and beauty is forever.

Pumpkinhead, by Ed Justin.

Keep away from Pumpkinhead,
Unless you're tired of living.
His enemies are mostly dead,
He's mean and unforgiving.
Laugh at him and you're undone,
But in some dreadful fashion.
Vengeance, he considers fun,
And plans it with a passion.
Time will not erase or blot
A plot that he has brewing,
It's when you think that he's forgot,
He'll conjure your undoing,
Bolted doors and windows barred,
Guard dogs prowling in the yard,
Won't protect you in your bed,
Nothing will, from Pumpkinhead!" 

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And speaking of The neo-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden: Not coincidentally, it was held 85 years after the German-American Bund did a startling similar “True Americanism” event at the same venue, promoting Hitler. All that was missing this time was (I kid you not) the portrait of George Washington surrounded by swastikas.

Here’s an excellent cartoon by the excellent Nick Anderson that ran yesterday:

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Okay, and now we we are now going to do this poll for the third and last time.

Okay, now we have arrived at the real-time portion of The Gene Pool, where I take your questions and observations and respond to them in Real Time. Many of the questions that have been rolling in so far involve my call, in the Weekend Gene Pool, for your stories about times you felt betrayed by someone, or some organization you trusted.

As always, please send your real-time Questions and Observations to this ugly Pumpkinheaded button:

And finally, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Gene Pool. Donald Trump will HATE it if you do.

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Q:I am sympathetic to those who have canceled their Post subscriptions, but that move strikes me as ineffective and ultimately self-defeating. Losing Post subscribers is not likely a big worry for Bezos. A more effective protest would be to cancel your Amazon Prime membership and stop using Amazon altogether until editorial independence is restored.  That might get his attention. But what American today values the Constitution and a free press over free next-day delivery?

Fewer Post subscriptions will, on the other hand, make things harder for the paper’s journalists. They continue to do, for the most part, very good work. Having the Post retrench further, or go under altogether, would be a gift to Trump. 

A: I agree with you.    Credible reports are that The Post has lost 200,000 subscriptions in three days.  That is a devastating figure; it is almost one-tenth of the readership. .  Not long ago, the Post publisher, Will Lewis, bragged about gaining 4,000 new subscribers in a year.  Think about that. 

I am not rooting for more cancellations, despite the mini-boon to me. This is not the fault of rank-and-file.

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Q: Disappointments in people I trusted —When I was nine years old, my mother threw away my security blankie, claiming that I “must have left it too close to the trash can.” I knew that it had been tucked neatly under my pillow, where I put it every morning when I made my bed. I don’t know whether I was more wounded by the loss of my bedraggled blanket, more holes than fabric, the emotional recipient of my tears and fears, my disappointments, and my joy; or by the realization that my mother could be both cruel and duplicitous. 

Since its release in 2017, I have watched The Post whenever I needed a dose of courage or an infusion of hope. The story of people whose vocation was to tell the truth and the inspiring reminder that choices have consequences have been an ongoing source of consolation and perseverance when it was my turn to speak up, or when the truth needed an amplifier.  

At this critical juncture in our nation’s history, we all need the confidence that, tattered and battered as it may be, truth is worth fighting over and fighting for. Core values must be examined, tested, and defined. Differing perspectives deserve consideration and critique. Ever grateful to the Editorial Board for their work, I grieve for the loss of another repository of my trust. Jeff Bezos has thrown  another blankie  away and besmirched the legacy of The Post. And Will Lewis has scolded us for leaving our hope too close to the trash.

I may have to resume sucking my thumb.  – Margaret Ann Faeth.

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A: Thank you, Margaret.  Beautifully told.   My odd and eccentric profession requires me to reveal here that, as “Reverend M. A. Faeth,” you are also an excellent aptonym.

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: Just click on the headline in the email and it will deliver you to the full column online. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

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Q: I am in complete agreement with you. I have been an avid reader of the Post for 60 years (I'm now 83) and never once questioned its integrity until Bezos installed the Murdoch cronies. Now my concerns are validated; what a selfish, money hungry decision from a man who already has more money than many countries and hasn't the guts to admit he knows right from wrong. His greed taints the Washington Post forever.

(I also had the honor once, of meeting Mrs. Graham at dinner. It was a small gathering hosted by Ambassador Sol Linowitz , then Chairman of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger. I was the Executive Director of the Commission and we were talking to her about the Post's coverage of hunger issues. I was struck by her knowledge, willingness to listen and decisiveness. In contrast to the current owner, a very special person, indeed.) - Dan Shaughnessy 

A: Never quite met anyone like her.   If you want to get a measure of her importance to journalism and the world, look at this picture.   No caption is necessary. 

Here is another great picture.  She was out covering a story for fun, and posed for this picture.   LOOK AT THE HANKIE.  She was a woman and a leader and, above all, a lady.

Q: The most disappointed I’ve ever been in this country’s leadership was after the Sandy Hook school shooting, and Congress (Republicans, of course) would not even consider sensible gun laws. I knew then that there was no act of depravity big enough or horrific enough to get them to do their jobs, and I lost heart. Some Supreme Court confirmations and subsequent rulings have come a close second.

A:  Agreed, and agreed. It still stuns me to this day.  It was early enough in this whole dreadful GOP transformation that I did not understand just how corrupted and amoral the party had become, and beholden to the basest of its “base.”

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Q: This is the best editorial cartoon I have seen on the subject of the Wapo retreat: 

Michael Kilby 

A: It’s elegant.  Understated.  Kind of great. 

Q: So if the Post story is right, what should they have done? Published the endorsement anyway? Quit? The big thing any employee did wrong was write and publish the editor's explanation about why, which was an obvious lie that nobody fell for. A few editorial board members quit but are apparently not leaving the paper or losing any salary? How does that work?—

A: I don’t fault anyone at the paper for not quitting; at least, not quitting without another job to go to. The rank and file are clearly furious, but they are not complicit. I doubt if there is a single editor or writer at that fine newspaper who agrees with this decision.

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This is Gene.  To the person who wrote in to say that your biggest disappointment is with ME, it made me both smile and grimace.   I can’t publish it for reasons you understand; others’ privacy is involved.  But just know that I saw it and appreciated it. You misunderstand a bunch of things, and assume certain things that aren’t true, but if I had printed it I would not have pushed back. I encourage opinions.  

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Q:  I am currently terribly disappointed by my veteran son.  He spent 20 years in the Air Force Special Forces.  To be in his position, he had to swear to protect the constitution.  He voted for Trump the first time around, and since then the best he can do is to promise not to vote at all.  I don't understand how my kind hearted, willing to give you the shirt off his back son can be so pig headed with regard to what is happening to the country he swore to protect for 20 years of his life. Nothing seems to sway him and that disappoints me.

A:  Thank you.   I got a lot of similar Trump-related disappointments with one’s flesh and blood.  This was the best. 

Q: In my brief tenure at the WashPost in 1980 and 81, laboring as a terrible sports copy editor, the newsroom was an insanely cool place. Woodward had his own glass cube in the middle of the room. Bradlee's had the huge window, Simons, the amazing exec, next to his. Really great writers and really great reporters and really cool people spread from wall to wall were all having really good fun. There was a buzz and a hum to the floor. It was like briefly dropping into the kind of newsroom anyone who joins the business would kill to be part of, if even tangentially. Egos were weirdly sublimated across the board. Also there was a girl over in Financial and when I asked around they said she was funny and cool and that Bradlee was known sometimes to sit on the edge of her desk but she was going out with a stud Metro reporter. Soon after at a Post softball game that she'd brought potato salad to she stroked a single to center. So things have woefully changed down there (I unsubscribed yesterday) but Melissa Davis still makes wonderful potato salad and the memories are still so vivid of a newsroom so quietly and effectively powerful that no one would have ever seriously tried to mess with what it was made to do, and did really well every day. Peter Richmond

A:  Thanks, Peter.  I still remember editing your piece on Why Football Is a Sissy Sport, for which we took a LOT of shit from the readers in Tropic, inasmuch as, purely by chance, it ran on Super Bowl Sunday THAT THE DOLPHINS WERE IN.   Say hi to Melissa for me.

Speaking of which, the other day I wrote here about my friendship with another writer, even earlier in my career.  We wrote a serial novel together for our newspaper.  Robert Basler has a vastly better memory than I do, and he wrote the whole nutty story here in his substack.  It’s really well written and you learn a lot about what a colossal asshole I was / am.  

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Q: Can I get a shout out for submitting "The Washington Pist" as an Invitational Entry so long ago, or at least a cursory dismissal? - Marc Leibert

A: Really? In what context? What contest? ARE YOU GOING TO SUE ME?

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Q: I’m one of your new subscribers. I was a long time reader of chatogical humor and didn’t know you were doing this until Carolyn Hax reposted your weekend column. I’ve been let down by so many politicians recently - GOP obviously because they’ve gone more bat-poop crazy with every passing day. But also Dems for continuing to act like they are still playing the political games of 1998. With Harris and Walz there seems to be a little movement on this front. Do you think this is the awakening (finally) of the Dems to the true situation where they might actually have our country’s back, or more of the same shoulder shrug what else can we do?

A: If I had taken the poll, I would have said I was pretty sure she was going to win.

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Q: Every new good thing for Kamala or bad thing for Donald, we're told it won't make a difference. Apparently the terrible comic at Madison Square Gardens had submitted his piece in advance and called Harris a c—-, and was censored. So Trump's people think there are things that go to far. But what else could happen that would break this election wide open?

A: I think it might have happened with Hitler rally. Oddly, I know this was sent in by a woman, and we allow curse words here, and have printed shit and fuck, but I felt the need to hyphenate the c word because… well, because. There are two words I won’t use.

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Q: Shortly after I graduated college my mother asked me to come home to sort through my things. I bought a plane ticket, a major expense for me, and divided my things into trash, donate, save. There were two boxes of things to save. A few months later I discovered she had thrown them out. She never apologized. She said, “Pretend you’re a refugee,” and “If you had REALLY wanted those things you wouldn’t have left them with me.”  OK, point taken.  I never trusted her again. 

A: Many, many disappointments sent in were about Dads.  This might be the only one about a Mom. 

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Q: One of my biggest disappointments without going through my therapy notes would have to be the fourth Indiana Jones movie. I know a movie may not sound like a big deal in the scheme of life events but those first three films are special to me. I vividly remember watching the first two at home on the VCR during movie night and just totally getting sucked in by the stories and the humor. I was a budding comedy nerd as a kid and it floored me that a hero could be a badass, tough guy and dumb and bumbling often within the same scene. One of my fondest memories is my dad picking me up from school and immediately taking me to the theater so we could watch "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," which is just as perfect of a film as the first one. So when a fourth movie emerged and the trailer actually made it look good, I was stoked to see it even if I had to go by myself. And it sucked. Actually, the opening scene in the warehouse had some funny bits and promises it could work but it sucked. It sucked so bad that I was actually in denial that it sucked. I held out hope that maybe a second or third or seventeenth viewing would make it better but eventually, its weapons grade suck just became too much to bare. I'm aware there's another one and I just don't want to see it because the burden of carrying that much denial even farther feels like pushing a boulder up a hill all over again. The only thing that would make me do that is if Harrison Ford had to run away from it when it inevitably rolled down the mountain again. 

- Danny Gallagher 

A:  Okay, after sifting through the massive global nominees for disappointment and betrayal, the triviality of  this made me laff.   I especially like “it’s weapons-grade suck.”  There is an interesting calculus with sequel movies – a form of Murphy’s Law.   As the actors get paid more and more for each sequel, the movies get worse and worse.    The only sequel I can think of that either matched or surpassed the original was Godfather II.   Any other nominees?

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Q: As someone smarter than me observed of HL Mencken's obituary of William Jennings Bryan, one could easily substitute Trump's name, "Bryan was a vulgar and common man, a cad undiluted. He was ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, blatant and dishonest. His career brought him into contact with the first men of his time; he preferred the company of rustic ignoramuses. It was hard to believe, watching him at Dayton, that he had traveled, that he had been received in civilized societies, that he had been a high officer of state. He seemed only a poor clod like those around him, deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things. He was a peasant come home to the dung-pile. Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not."

A: That is fabulous. Thank you.

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This is Gene. I am calling us down now for the day. For those of you who are new to this thing, we return on Thursday with The Invitational, a weekly humor contest that started in the Washington Post Style section in 1993. It is 31 years old, and going strong. It is run by me and Pat Myers. The nature of the contest changes every week. We encourage you to both read and enter it; we need the wit and wisdom. To enter you do need to be a paid subscriber, but the fame that awaits you is inestimable.

Please keep sending in Questions and Observations. I’ll be answering them on Thursday as well.