Mr. Sulzberger, Bret Stephens Just Sharted Out Another One!

 

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.  

I Am The Liberal Media