Washington Post subscribers throw mass temper tantrum
… Which is another giant tell about our country.
According to this NPR article, “The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
“More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday … the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of roughly 2.5 million subscribers …The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.”
Let’s stop right here and consider what we just read:
At least 200,000 subscribers of the nation’s second-most- important newspaper threw a massive group temper tantrum because the paper’s Establishment stenographers will not endorse Kamala Harris.
If this doesn’t provide a “tell” about the political views of large swaths of the country, nothing will.
This reaction confuses me on multiple levels.
1) Does anyone actually think a Washington Post endorsement (or non-endorsement) will change the vote of one citizen in the country?
2) Doesn’t everyone already know 99.9 percent of the staff of The Washington Post is pulling harder for Kamala than Americans pulled for the 1980 Olympic hockey team to beat the USSR?
3) Call me a skeptic, but I seriously doubt 8 percent of this newspaper’s subscribers - the population of a large city - instantly went to a website and hit “unsubscribe” because Jeff Bezos decided to not publish a presidential endorsement.
“ ‘It’s a colossal number,’ former Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli told NPR.”
Me: I agree with Mr. Brauchli. A colossal number of Americans are suffering from such extreme cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome the FDA needs to issue another EUA “vaccine” to keep these people out of the ICU.
4) The NPR story doesn’t tell readers, but I wonder how many Trump supporters cancelled their Post subscriptions because this newspaper didn’t endorse their candidate?
5) Out of curiosity, how many Trump supporters subscribe to The Washington Post?
6) The above, of course, is a rhetorical question. We all know the answer is “fewer than 10” … which prompts this question: How does a “fair and balanced” newspaper stay in business when half the population would rather eat a bug than support said newspaper?
So little time, so much to debunk …
Every paragraph in this story warrants cursory parsing. A few whoppers jumped out to me:
“Post reporters have revealed repeated instances of wrongdoing and allegations of illegality by Trump and his associates.”
Me: You don’t say. Out of curiosity, how many Post reporters specialize in reporting “wrongdoing and allegations of illegality” by Joe Biden, his family and his associates?
“… The editorial page, which operates separately, has characterized Trump as a threat to the American democratic experiment. Several Post journalists say their relatives are among those canceling subscriptions.”
Me: Again, please tell readers something we don’t know. We get it already; we’ve read the meme 3,472 times: Trump is a grave threat to the American democratic experiment.
… And don’t those relatives of staffers know that cancelling their subscription is going to make it even more likely the Washington Post lays off their loved one?
Don’t they know how lucky their relative is to work for a paper owned by a billionaire who doesn’t mind losing hundreds of millions of dollars operating a paper that exists to serve the CIA and Deep State?
This statement retires the prize for Brazen Disinformation (emphasis added):
“(Cancelling subscriptions) send(s) a message to ownership but it shoots you in the foot if you care about the kind of in-depth, quality journalism like the Post produces,” he said. “There aren’t many organizations that can do what the Post does. The range and depth of reporting by the Post’s journalists is among the best in the world.”
Me: The “range” and “depth” of reporting on the Covid response (and 100 other topics) is among the worst in the world. There is no “range” or “depth” to this paper’s “journalism” … which, presumably explains why 2.5 million Americans (now 2.3 million) subscribed to the newspaper.
And, BTW, the country has hundreds of news organizations that can and do produce the same type of “journalism” as The Washington Post.
“… Two columnists have resigned from the paper and two writers have stepped down from the editorial board.”
Me: Welcome to Substack, guys! Or: Is the New York Times or Gannett hiring?
“… One of those writers, Molly Roberts, warned of the possible consequences of the eleventh-hour decision to stay quiet rather than publish the editorial endorsing Harris. "Donald Trump is not yet a dictator," she wrote in a statement she posted on social media. "But the quieter we are, the closer he comes.”
Me: Do these scribes really think Donald Trump will be a “dictator?” Are they all this obtuse? (One of the great riddles of our times is how groupthink can reach 100 percent).
Back to the NPR story: “The other writer is David Hoffman, who accepted a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing on Thursday. Pulitzer judges recognized him “for a compelling and well-researched series on … the tactics authoritarian regimes use to repress dissent in the digital age, and how they can be fought.”
“For decades, the Washington Post's editorials have been a beacon of light, signaling hope to dissidents, political prisoners and the voiceless,” Hoffman wrote in a letter explaining his decision to leave the editorial board. “When victims of repression were harassed, exiled, imprisoned and murdered, we made sure the whole world knew the truth.”
Me: Please gag me with my computer mouse.
What “voiceless dissidents” is this man talking about? I’m one of the millions of dissidents from Covid times who had zero “voice” in the pages of The Washington Post.
What “truth” has The Washington Post published about “vaccine” deaths, injuries, embalmers’ clots, virus origins or real Infection Fatality Rates?
And I won’t even get into Hunter Biden’s laptop and the 30 Russian trolls who somehow rigged the 2016 presidential election with a couple dozen Facebook posts nobody saw.
The Post staff should include a few Trump admirers …
One would think if Post journalists despise “authoritarian” mandates, a few staffers might be admirers of Donald Trump, who actually used such tactics to shut down most of the country with the Covid lockdowns.
Apparently, the gripe was he didn’t do enough to ignore “democracy,” which, once up a time, entailed passing laws to terrorize or punish non-conforming citizens.
Trump probably now recognizes he made a terrible blunder in yielding to the “guidance” of real autocrats like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx.
Of course, Kamala Harris will do whatever the unelected directors of the government’s 200 Alphabet Agencies tell her to do - which explains why she has to be elected and why 200,000 Post subscribers are having a nervous breakdown right now.
For emphasis, I’ll provide the Post’s Pulitzer-Prize winner an even greater “voice.” (Question: How do you win a Pulitzer if you have no voice?)
“I believe we face a very real threat of autocracy in the candidacy of Donald Trump,” Hoffman added …“I find it untenable and unconscionable that we have lost our voice.”
Me: Fellow, you should spend one day in my shoes. I can assure you NPR isn’t going to quote me or any of my contrarian Substack colleagues.
“Hoffman says he intends to remain at the paper, saying he "refuses to give up on The Post, where I have spent 42 years." He writes of being launched on several projects, including "the expanded effort to support press freedom around the world.”
Me: The Trusted News Initiative was created to expand press freedom and give a greater voice to skeptics and dissidents? Who knew?
On CNN, “… Former columnist Robert Kagan … explained his decision to resign from the paper.
“We are in fact bending the knee to Donald Trump because we're afraid of what he will do,” Kagan said.
*** (The only way I could reach 1 percent of the Post’s audience is if all 6,670 of my subscribers used the share weapon). ***
A nugget of truth!
Me: Devils, I’m told, often mix the truth with lies. Here we have a nugget of important truth: The mainstream media - and everyone who depends on the MSM to disseminate its propaganda - is indeed “afraid” of what Donald Trump will do.
Still, until this story, I didn’t know that hundreds of thousands of readers of one newspaper would be so terrified of four more years of Trump they’d cancel their subscriptions to a newspaper that, for 8 years, has been practicing journalism warfare against the same man.
But I know this now.
If Trump wins Tuesday, several things will happen ..
All those subscribers - and then some - will come back (because they’ll need their fix of anti-Trump articles.)
Post journalists and editors will say the election was rigged and will probably write editorials telling Congress to not certify the results.
Although Trump is now routinely compared to Hitler, no American will be thrown into a concentration camp.
Would-be authoritarian Trump will not shutdown The Washington Post. (Trump didn’t even tell his previous Department of Justice to prosecute “Crooked Hillary.” Compare and contrast to what the Biden Department of Justice did to Donald Trump.)
And if Kamala wins …
Conversely, if Kamala Harris “wins,” The Post (and its subscribers) will get the authoritarian president they say they don’t want.
The Censorship Industrial Complex will ramp up to levels Orwell never envisioned. Trump, once and for all, will end up in a gulag.
Democracy will not die in “darkness” (as The Post’s ridiculous
slogan says).
Instead (sarcasm alert), “Democracy” will die in blinding bursts of light produced by MSM journalists who write Pulitzer-worthy copy supporting every authoritarian “reform.”
While Post journalists will be ecstatic, people like me will be very afraid … not of Kamala Harris, but the people and organizations who are telling “President” Harris what she can and cannot do.
Millions of Americans will be even more afraid because they realize they live in a country where a State propaganda organ like The Washington Post has so much influence.
At least to this independent journalist, the fact so many citizens want one of the nation’s most-important newspapers to attack “dissidents” and “extremists” like myself is a tad unsettling.
(I wonder if any of the 200,000 irate former Post subscribers might subscribe to my Substack. Something tells me all 200,000 would be happy if my newsletter was shut down … to defend “democracy.)
I just canceled my WP subscription for the outrageous attack on the Trump MSG rally as a Nazi party Hitler rally.
How many Amazon workers slaving away in Bezos's giant warehouses care what the Post says about anything?