Hello.
The cartoon above was run by The Washington Post just a couple of days after they axed the cartoon below, by Ann Telnaes.
Let us take a moment to parse these two decisions and decide whether The Washington Post retains any credibility in this deadly, dreary period of sustained corporate lickspittlery.
Ms. Telnaes’ cartoon pilloried the moguls of tech and media —including, prominently, Post owner Jeffrey Bezos — for sucking up to Donald Trump editorially and financially; when it was spiked, the cartoonist resigned. Mr. Ramirez’s cartoon is suggesting that the surgeon general’s recent tepid warning that alcohol abuse can lead to cancer is merely a symptom of Big Liberal Government’s desire to control people’s lives via jack-booted, nanny-state anti-capitalist overregulation.
Quite a one-two punch.
I didn’t call current management for comment. First, I doubt they will talk to the editor of …
… these days. And second, they will likely not be honest. At every exposure of every recent lurch toward Trumpist fealty, they have sniveled and obfuscated and outright lied in defense of their decisions. Gonna lie again.
This is not just a shift in editorial judgment we are witnessing: It is a deliberate stifling of thought and a substitution of other, less defensible thought. It is an assault on truth.
I first met Michael Ramirez in 2008, at a Pulitzer Prize awards luncheon. Seemed like a nice guy. I no longer think he is.
Ramirez is a conservative, which is (technically) no sin. But he is a certain type of conservative, an intellectually dishonest one who distorts his facts to arrive at party-line reactionary conclusions.
Consider this cartoon, which I savaged a few months ago:
Note the scattershot things he casually attributes to the Harris campaign, to make his point: “Defund the police,” “open borders,” “no free speech,” the Chinese communist flag, the Russian flag, “identity politics,” etc.
So now we have his new cartoon, about the surgeon general and drinking and cancer. Vivek H. Murthy feels alcohol products should be labeled with warnings that their consumption can contribute to cancer … as was done with cigarettes. It’s now established scientific fact. Murthy has no enforcement powers here. He’s timidly proposing that legislators consider possibly addressing this issue.
This triggered Ramirez to roll out his sometimes incoherent party-line canon cannon. This is not just about an overdue medical warning! It is about everything bad that liberals wreak: They want to tell you how to raise your kids! They want to take away your booze! They want to … control you at work? They want to … wait, mental illness? What? They want to take over mental illness? Never mind, don’t ask questions because Ramirez is on a roll!
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This just in: The Wapo has apparently just ended its progressive, nationally groundbreaking column on Gender by its brilliant writer Monica Hesse. This is being reported by Fox News. Hesse, they say, is not fired and will be reassigned. No one at the paper is talking. More on this as it develops.
Po Wapo.
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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:
Thoughts, questions, etc.
Also, maybe you consider:
The WP is fine with a punch-less cartoon on Dr. Murthy, a highly qualified surgeon-general. But it's silent on wacko RFK Jr., who has no public health qualifications whatsoever, to head HHS. Talk about shameless pandering and gutlessness.
This is all so disheartening. I feel for the reporters, editors and staff. I wish them well and hope this can get turned around. The darkness is getting too real.