I was sorely tempted to cancel my longstanding Washington Post subscription when the paper refused to endorse Kamala Harris for president.
My unease grew when WaPo Top Gun political scribes Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer and pundit Jennifer Rubin jumped ship.
So I called my buddy Bill Straub in the DC Area. Bill is a former Frankfort and Washington newshound, Kentucky Journalism Hall of Famer, and current Northern Kentucky Tribune columnist. When he said he was sticking with the Post, however reluctantly, I decided to stay the course, too.
But I pulled the plug on Wednesday when I opened my iPhone to The New York Times and read the headline, “Bezos Orders Washington Post Opinion Section to Embrace ‘Personal Liberties and Free Markets.’” The subhead was a grabber, too: “David Shipley, The Post’s opinion editor, is resigning after trying to persuade Jeff Bezos to reconsider the new direction.”
After I cancelled my subscription, I called Bill and discovered he’s now inclined to do likewise.
I wanted to phone the Post and explain — politely but firmly — to some subscription department staffer that I was ditching the Post because of Bezos’s MAGAfication of one of the world’s best newspapers.
I found a toll free number, called it, and got a recording that said the wait time for a response would be longer than usual. I expected the system overload was due to a slew of cancellers like me.
So I signed up for a callback, which came about half an hour later. I answered, keyed in the number to be connected and was immediately cut off. I got another callback about 15 minutes later. Same result.
More than a tad perturbed, I managed to end my subscription online. There were questions asking why I was departing. I clicked on the one that said “dissatisfaction with content” or something like that.
I wonder how long it will take billionaire Bezos to change the Post’s “Democracy Dies in Darkness” motto to “MAGA Uber Alles” or something else sufficiently Trumpist.
“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” Bezos bloviated in announcing the paper’s full-speed-ahead, hard-to-starboard, MAGAward swerve. (I could almost hear Lee Greenwood, the old Vietnam-era draft dodger, crooning, “God Bless the U.S.A.,” the MAGA national anthem.)
Publisher Bezos said “a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else.”
By economic freedom, Bezos means a Social Darwinian economy that’s union free and free of government-mandated safeguards designed to protect we the people from the greedy excesses inherent in bare-knuckle, unfettered capitalism — in other words, an economy in which only rich, rightwing lives matter.
With Bezos at the helm, my guess is that it won’t be long until the wall of separation between news and opinion cracks or even crumbles at the Post.
Then, the Post can give the unabashedly MAGA New York Post a run for its money as the best newspaper to line the bottom of birdcages and cat litter boxes.
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