The worm is turning

Oh, my friends. Things are beginning to dawn on our media betters.

From the mass cancellations to their newspapers, to the mass abandonment of their TV outlets, those who did the right thing on November 5th have had enough. 

These organizations spent the past four years rooting for Donald Trump. Joe Biden was too boring, too competent. He didn't drive ratings. He didn't drive up their stock prices enough. (Which, frankly, is ludicrous, as the market reached heights under Pres. Biden that it had never seen before.) As has been written about on this site, Pres. Biden's pulling out of Afghanistan was the act which set this all in motion. The media was denied its forever war. No, it hardly paid attention to it. But it was always there, in the background. Ending a war is anathema to the media elite. It deprives them of an easy b-roll. The country fell apart, the Taliban was storming into Kabul, and, of course, Donald Trump had made a deal to pull all US troops out of the country and stuck Pres. Biden with handling it. But Joe Biden had the intestinal fortitude to end the war, so it was all his fault. No mention of the superhuman airlift which the US conducted to spirit over 100,000 Afghans out of the country before Kabul fell. No. Organizations like the New York Times simply salivated over something to pin on him, and kept repeating right-wing memes until they became true in the public's eye.

There have been countless stories along the lines of: they'll be back. They can't live without us. Well, let me tell you a little tale.

If you've been on this blog for any length of time, its former subhed referred to the Financial Times. The color scheme was FT's color scheme. I loved that paper.

The other day, FT published an op-ed by Peter Thiel. Yes, that Peter Thiel. My subscription was due to renew at the end of January. The moment I saw that piece, I canceled. I had to go through three windows imploring me to stay, and each time I derived satisfaction by clicking "cancel".

I will not give you my hard-earned money if you then publish pieces by vile scum like Thiel. I will not give you my money if you have a roundtable on your pages asking: Just how BAD was Joe Biden as president? I simply won't. And no amount of after-the-game quarterbacking will make me change that. I know how bad it'll be. I don't need you to now do "accountability journalism."

Your chance at "accountability" was in the previous four years. You should have held Trump and Republicans to account. You should have defended democracy, and recognized that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Democrats were the only ones to defend it. You should have called out the Republican Party and its orange standard-bearer for the threat to the Republic that they were.

But no. For four years you did everything you could to tear down the pro-democracy forces. You played the most pathetic game of "both sides" ever. You could have used your influence to educate your readers and viewers. But you didn't see them as citizens needing to be informed about the reality of the situation. You saw them only as "consumers," to be catered to and pulled and prodded to keep reading you or viewing you. You had to keep the anger stoked, and you directed that anger at the incumbent administration, damn the consequences.

And now you ask us to come back to see you cosplay as heroic journalists. No. Nein. Nyet. And fuck you. Real journalists the world over risk their very lives to hold the evil to account. You couldn't even risk your access to figures in Trumpworld. You will now write yourselves as the heroes in your own narratives, when you are nothing of the kind. You are merely pettifogging careerists, servants to right-wing power.

I am done. Until you recognize your true role under the Constitution—as guardians of democratic values—you will continue to bleed your audience. We will leave you and seek information elsewhere. You have alienated your core audience in search of clicks. We will not return until you have mended your ways.

So, Mr. Lipton. From the bottom of my heart, with my full chest: Fuck you. Enjoy your cocktail parties with the incoming regime. That should be of some comfort.