Provider 1 bids 300 quatloos on "Is the US economy growing too quickly?"
Provider 2 bids 400 quatloos on "Kamala Harris Must Save the Republican Party!"
Provider 3 bids 500 quatloos on "US officials have arrested two of Mexico’s
most powerful drug traffickers in El Paso, Texas. Here's why that's bad news
for Joe Biden." (h/t NYT Pitchbot.)
It's just a game to them. Nothing but a game. Sure, a few thralls
might be injured or killed, but what is that compared to the thrill of the
game?
Just put it on the floor with all the others, Henri. I shall wallow in
it later.
When considering the overflowing toilet of bad takes and swaggering idiocy
that The New York Times' op-ed has become, one is moved to wonder
whether the Times' editorial board belongs to the same genus as its
readers any more. Whether third-generation nepo baby A.G. Sulzberger
cracks open a copy of his family's newspaper every day and regards what he
sees printed therein with...what? Horror? Delight?
Indifference? Some completely alien emotion, indigenous to the
permanently cosseted wealthy, for which there is no human name?
However we can say a number of things with near-complete certainty about the
Times' decision-making process.
First, as the paper's 21-years-and-counting David Brooks blight and its
41-years-and-counting Maureen Dowd ulcer and its 43-years-and-counting
Tom Friedman running sore proves beyond any doubt, the Times' employee hiring
and retention policy is like unto joining a street gang in a Broadway musical.
Second, it's clear that the America which A.G. Sulzberger sees from the
13,475th floor of the Times' ivory tower bears no relationship to the actual
America the rest of us experience every day.
How else does one explain the hiring a hastily-whitewashed Conservative
evangelical National Review goof like David French to give the
Times...what? A unique insight into the
Conservative Christofascist cult? Based French's many columns
professing that it had all caught him completely by surprise? That he
actually never had any fucking idea what was really going on inside his
Republican party?
Or the hiring of a bitter, thin-skinned, climate-denying,
Wall Street Journal concern troll like Bret Stephens? He
certainly does not represent in any way the volcanic shitshow that the
Republican party has become. He's been Big Stupid Wrong in his
predictions, Big Stupid Clueless in his insights, and Big Stupid Petty
in his publicly-embarrassing squabbles, so what the fuck is he doing on the
A.G. Sulzberger's masthead?
Hell, what are any of them doing there?
What's been clear for decades is The New York Times is certainly not a
"liberal" paper in any sense of the word. Instead, it's a paper that has
shown us, over and over again, that can be bullied into handing its lunch
money over to the worst people in politics if those people just scream "The New York Times is Liberal!"
loud enough.
It's a paper where, between bloody-minded vendettas against Democrats running
for president, the insulated critters at the top of the management hierarchy
strive endlessly for the Holy Center. The "View from Nowhere". All
in the vain belief that if they just accommodate the fascists a little
more...and a little more...and just a little more, while cloaking their
appeasement in high-minded double-talk about "balance" and "the extremes on
Both Sides", the fascists will finally leave them alone.
Because The Inevitable Pivot is underway ("What? You took 'age' of the
table? How dare you! Now we have to hurry up and find some other
reason to slag the Democratic candidate while ignoring Donald Trump's
increasingly deranged public meltdowns") one of the very worse of The New York
Times' shit-takers, Bret Bug himself, got two bites at the mold apple.
One in the Times' stiflingly mildewed drawing room puppet show called "The
Conversation" in which the 817-year-old Gail Collins attempts to yuck it up
with whichever junior-most Conserative on the payroll drew the short straw,
and the other in Stephen's own column.
Here are a few snips from Stephens' half of The Conversation. This:
What’s past is past. Democrats could still have an opportunity to reset
the whole race, bring the excitement over to their side and at least have
a chance of avoiding what looked like certain doom in November. At least
if they don’t make the mistake of simply accepting a Harris nomination as
a fait accompli.
And this:
Harris is an even weaker candidate than Biden. Not that I’ll vote for
Trump, but I don’t think I can vote for her.
And this:
I could gladly vote for Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear or
Wes Moore, among other promising Democratic possibilities. I won’t just
vote for any Democrat at all on the theory that definitionally they’re all
better than Trump. I don’t believe that. And I don’t believe that Trump
means the end of democracy or civilization or life on Earth. We lived
through four bumpy Trump years before and I’m pretty sure we can survive
another four.
I know a lot of our readers will pillory me for saying this, so let me
add one thing: I am where a lot of independent voters are. Democrats ought
to think carefully about which nominee might appeal to voters like
us.
No one but the most cynically calculating, privileged Conservative douchbag
could possible hand-wave away Trump's time in the White House as no
biggie. Or that there would be no serious threat posed by a second Trump
term. Or casually let fly that he's not going to vote for Harris just
'cuz.
And this -- "Democrats ought to think carefully about which nominee might appeal to
voters like us." -- has always been the key to understanding most of our Never Trump
"allies". That they are our political equivalent of dispossessed Russian
aristocrats. I wrote a whole long thing about it
five years ago:
And once it all blew up in their faces -- once it became obvious (yet again)
that they never had the slightest idea what was really going on in their own
country and that the Left had been right about the Right all along and --
the Never Trumpers reacted exactly you would expect entitled royalty to
react.
Exactly like exiled Russian aristocracy after the revolution.
Aristocrats who had been run out of their out of their country by the serfs
they had exploited.
Aristocrats who suddenly found themselves financially dependent on the
largess of people they detested.
Aristocrats who, with that special, asshole-arrogance that comes with an
inbred sense of entitlement, become indignant when their hosts don't
snap to and do as they're told.
Aristocrats who still believe in their God-given right to command a national
spotlight and who go right on airily insisting they know what the serfs
really want.
But upon reflection, "aristocrat" is clearly a mere aspect of their
nature. What we are actually dealing with are vampires.
Blood-hungry parasites who are powerless unless they are invited to cross the
threshold and come on in. But once inside they begin to take over, so
way to go New York Times! Way to go MSNBC!
They are the politically undead, who figuratively cast no reflection.
Who cannot or will not see themselves as they truly are. Who cannot live
without carving out a political safe space for themselves wherever they are:
in a comfy ideological coffin on a thin layer of the dirt from Reagan's grave.
These are not the "political homeless". These are political revenants,
forced to leave their ancestral feeding grounds and seek fresh blood
elsewhere. And once they were invited into our territory and had secured
position for themselves in the rafters of the "Liberal" media, they began
dictating terms.
Democrats ought to think carefully about which nominee might appeal to
voters like us.
Never occurs to grub worms like Stephens that, having helped lead his own
party to such cataclysmic disaster that it eventually spit him out, maybe he
should consider shutting the fuck up about what Democrats need to do to make
creatures like Bret Stephens more comfy. Maybe he should instead focus
the second half of worthless life on making amends for all the damage he has
done during the first half of his worthless life.
See what I mean about casting no reflection?
Anyone who cares about democracy and takes the threat of a Trump second term
seriously has begun joining the phalanx around our party's nominee.
Trying to do whatever is in their power to beat Donald Trump in November.
But Stephens is not interested in any of that. Instead, Bret Bug used
his second appearance on the Times' op-ed page as a very public place
to dump a long, venomous screed against the Democratic party selecting Kamala
Harris as their standard-bearer:
Democrats Deserved a Contest, Not a Coronation
Here's a sample:
But the one thing the Democratic Party is not supposed to be is
anti-democratic — a party in which insiders select the nominee from the
top down, not the bottom up, and which expects the rank and file to fall
in line and clap enthusiastically. That’s the playbook of ruling parties
in autocratic states.
If the rest piques your morbid interest you, you can look it up yourself. But if you do,
for your own safety, I'd suggest you gird yourself with a cross, a few cloves
of garlic and a dab of holy water behind each ear.
Yes, MSNBC's two remaining heavy hitters, Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachael Maddow,
want to make it very clear that they lurve
The New York Times.
Lurve, lurve, lurve the Times. Because for people in the media
business, New Amsterdam is a small town, and you never know when you're going
to need the favor of the dragon on the mountain, so whenever you approach the
dragon, 'tis best to first make supplications. What a mighty tail you
have. And such glossy scales. And have you done something
with your hair? It seems so bouncy and manageable.
First, always, declaim your lurve. Its depth and irreplaceability
Take it away, Edgar Allan Poe:
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
It's just that, well, sometimes, the Times gets drunk. After all,
it's under a lot of stress and has many mouths to feed. And when it gets
a little drunk, sometimes it gets reckless. And verbally abusive.
And sometimes -- well, frequently -- it uses the media clout is harvests from its loyal readers like Mr. O'Donnell and Ms. Maddow, to engage in petty,
vindictive, democracy-corroding vendettas on the front page the paper.
And because it is the dragon on the mountain, those petty, vindictive,
democracy-corroding vendettas tend to get the whole media herd moving in that
direction.
Day, after day, after day.
But if we just stick with it. Praise it. Laud it. And then,
and only then then, gingerly approach any criticism of its
democracy-corroding bad habits with a very long, very soft pair of salad
tongs, then maybe it'll change. Because in there, somewhere, buried
beneath all the David Frenches and David Brookses and Bret Stephenses.
Beneath the insipid Aaron Sorkin claptrap and the guest columns routinely
tossed out despicable wingnuts like plastic Mardi Gras beads. Beneath all
of that and this (from
Left Jabs) --
They kicked Joe Biden when he was down. Over seven days, they published
142 news articles and 50 opinion pieces about it. All on the website
homepage, all “above the fold.” It was a long scroll before you came to
anything else.
-- surely there is still a great American newspaper in there somewhere.
And apparently the plan is for all of us to wait around patiently until that
newspaper shows up.
As we mentioned once or twice on our podcast, we had planned on Ridin' with Biden to the end. Without reservation. However, as we also made clear, if President Biden felt that stepping aside was in the best interest of the party and the country, that was also be just fine with us because we trusted his judgement. Whoever leads the ticket has our vote.
Period. Full stop.
However, as the Guardian of Inconvenient History and the co-host of the "No Fair Remembering Stuff" podcast, I have no plans to ever forget the shameful, public "Dump Biden" pile-on by Hollywood celebrities, our Never Trump "allies", the Pod Save rug rats, the wealthy donors -- who resorted to what amounted to down-ticket extortion to pressure Dems in tight races to come out against Biden, and most egregiously of all, the entire corporate media, including CNN, MSNBC and, leading the jackal pack, The New York Fucking Times.
Like the Grinch's heart on Christmas Day, my list of "fuck you forever" backstabbers, fair-weather friends, moth-eaten "insiders" and jumped-up toddlers with outsized platforms grew three sizes over the past few weeks.
I'm all-in for Kamala Harris and whoever she chooses as her running mate.
But I will also never forget how so many people with so much money and clout publicly did my president dirty when he asked for their help.
