I Do Appreciate Fourth Generation Nepo Baby A.G. Sulzberger Coming Right Out and Saying That Fighting For Democracy is Beneath Him

 

Really clarifies things.

Writing about it happening in other countries?  Well that's just fine.  In fact, what Sulzberger has produced in this end-of-the-summer essay is a long and otherwise-admirable essay on the threats to democracy and the free press...in other countries.  

Like India. And Brazil.  And Turkey.  

And all of those high-minded sentiments leak away into the gutter through this very large hole near the top of his mountain of words:

As someone who strongly believes in the foundational importance of journalistic independence, I have no interest in wading into politics. I disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection. It is beyond shortsighted to give up journalistic independence out of fear that it might later be taken away. At The Times, we are committed to following the facts and presenting a full, fair and accurate picture of November’s election and the candidates and issues shaping it. Our democratic model asks different institutions to play different roles; this is ours.

You see, the actual fight for our democracy here and now is very grubby and déclassé.  Best left to others.

Also, before retiring to his Thinking Chamber to commune with the ghosts of his ancestors, Sulzberger could not resist taking one, final, petty swipe at the president who wouldn't give him what he'd stamped his feet and demanded:

Make no mistake, no American political leader likes the scrutiny of the media or has a perfect record on press freedom. Every president since the country’s founding has complained about the pesky questions of reporters who seek to keep the public informed. This includes President Joe Biden, who spoke glowingly about the importance of the free press but whose systematic avoidance of unscripted encounters with independent journalists has defied long-standing precedent and allowed him to evade questions about his age and fitness.

Alert readers all over social media have noted the massive drop in the Times' interest in the "age and fitness" of candidates once it became an issue for only one of the candidates.  Because the Times' is manifestly not interested in "journalistic independence" today, any more than they were 20 years ago when I started writing about the mainstream media's fetish for bending over backwards to appease the escalating derangement of the Right by Both Sidesing every goddamn thing.

Alert readers will also note that even as Sulzberger was whinging on about following facts and full, fair and accurate pictures, his loyal underlings were experienced enough to know a wink and a nudge from the executive suite when they see it.   So they went right on using what remains of the the Times' threadbare reputation to "sanewash" the ravings of a doddering madman into something resembling a policy brief. 

From The New Republic:

How the Media Sanitizes Trump’s Insanity

The political press’s efforts to rationalize Trump’s incoherent statements are eroding our shared reality and threatening informed democracy.

In its write-up of that portion of Trump’s speech, The New York Times omitted Trump’s mention of autism, simply writing that “Mr. Trump said that, if elected to a second term, a panel of experts ‘working with Bobby’ would investigate obesity rates and other chronic health  issues in the United States.” By removing the mention of autism, which should be a red flag whenever paired with a mention of Kennedy, the Times took an obvious nod to a conspiracy theory and turned it into a normal-sounding policy proposal.

While speaking at an event put on by the extremist group Moms for Liberty, Trump spread a baseless conspiracy theory that “your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation,” referring to transition-related surgeries for trans people. In their write-up of the event, a glowing piece about how Trump “charmed” this group of “conservative moms,” the Times didn’t even mention the moment where he blathered on and on about a crazy conspiracy that has and will never happen.

This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy...

Voters who rely solely on traditional news sources are presented with a version of Trump that bears little resemblance to reality. They see a former president who, while controversial, appears to operate within the bounds of normal political discourse—or at worst, is breaking with it in some kind of refreshing manner. You can see this folie à deux at work in a recent Times piece occasioned by Trump’s amplification of social media posts alleging that Harris owed her career to the provision of “blowjobs”: “Though he has a history of making crass insults about his opponents, the reposts signal Mr. Trump’s willingness to continue to shatter longstanding norms of political speech.” Meanwhile, those who seek out primary sources encounter a starkly different figure—one prone to conspiracy theories, personal attacks, and extreme rhetoric...

Over the weekend, the Times seemed intent on validating [Jeffrey] Goldberg’s words with a questionable “campaign notebook” article titled “Meandering? Off-Script? Trump Insists His ‘Weave’ Is Oratorical Genius.”

Writer Shawn McCreesh drew generous parallels between Trump’s speaking style and celebrated wordsmiths:

Certainly, in the history of narrative, there have been writers celebrated for their ability to be discursive only to cleverly tie together all their themes with a neat bow at the end—William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Larry David come to mind.

He then added, “But in the case of Mr. Trump, it is difficult to find the hermeneutic methods with which to parse the linguistic flights that take him from electrocuted sharks to Hannibal Lecter’s cannibalism, windmills and Rosie O’Donnell.”

McCreesh didn’t stop there. He went on to liken Trump to literary giants James Joyce and William Faulkner, and even psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud...

The chasm between what Sulzberger keeps touting as the Times' principles and the garbage the Times consistently produces cannot be bridged by chalking it up to his either not noticing what's going on at the Times or not caring.  This wild disparity can only be reconciled by understanding that Sulzberger's primary role in the legacy media is not as the steward of a newspaper, but as the patriarch of a cult.   

A cult every bit as smothering and addictive as the MAGA is a cult.   

The cult of Both Sides Do It.

A cult in which "fairness" means blaming Both Sides.  "Independence" means blaming Both Sides.  Journalism itself means blaming Both Sides.  

If Both Sides don't have age and fitness issues, then Trump's age and fitness is no longer an issue.  

If  Both Sides don't have candidates who are publicly decompensating into rambling incoherence, then Trump's rambling incoherence must be barbered into something that sounds like an intelligible policy position.  

If  Both Sides don't have candidates who are vomiting lies 24/7, then, well, why bother covering Trump's 24/7 lying?

I have no reason to doubt that, as the patriarch of the cult of Both Sides Do It, Sulzberger believes that he has  "no interest in wading into politics" even as the huge sweaty hand of The New York Times presses firmly down on the Right side of the political scale.  

And that should alarm the hell out of anyone who gives a damn about the future of democracy in America.

Burn The Lifeboats