As Trumps Feigns Sex Act on His Mic, Bezos, Other Media Sycophants Are Called Out.
Kamala Harris’ and Tim Kaine’s brilliant appearances on Saturday Night Live this weekend are giving the final hours before the election almost a celebratory tone, while on the other side a lame and tattered Trump seems trying to enjoy his last moments by messaging and gesturing at a sex act with his mic. This context only heightens the shame of Trump sycophants like Jeff Bezos who continue to do Trump’s bidding, but who are now staring at an epic and humiliating defeat on the face. The backlashes on their business efforts, especially on Bezos’ now fatally wounded, stemming from his unilateral act last week to kill an endorsement of Harris by his newspaper’s editorial team, attempt to operate a credible newspaper in the D.C. area..
But even in these final hours, the pressure to kowtow to Trump abides in the media, exemplified by the refusal of the Newswire,com to distribute (as is its business) a press release this weekend about the Falls Church News-Press’ front page banner headline that read, “Washington Post Won’t Endorse, But We Do: Harris For President.” The Newswire.com rejection note said the decision was based on the release containing “opinionated content…criticizing third parties.” I protested, writing back, :”I strongly object to your decision to not to publish our press release submitted to you today. It is a report of a political endorsement and of a chastisement of a media organization that has drawn an international protest including 250,000 subscriber cancellations as a result of its actions. It is a stunning move on your part to suppress these facts as presented from our perspective, and I suggest you reconsider.”
The rejection follows exactly the pattern and non-explanation by Bezos for his decision to kill an endorsement of Harris by The Post editorial team, and I described in my editorial this week as “grounded in a fear of retaliation by Trump…and as such constitutes the very face of fascism.” .
A Post critic this weekend properly extended the analysis of The Post’s bias under Bezos to its characterization of a “false equivalence and both-sideism” evident in article placements and letters to the editor. So wrote Arlington’s Norman D’Amours. We saw it Saturday, for example, in its page one coverage of Russian efforts at meddling in the U.S. election. The headline claims the Russian meddling “Aims to Stoke U.S. Disarray,” rather than, as is the fact described in the article, that it is aimed at supporting Trump over Harris. The Post is now rampant with this kind of subtle bias, the work of Bezos’ tainted product of the rightwing Murdoch machine, Will Lewis.
While over 250,000 subscribers to The Post’s digital editions have cancelled subscriptions in protest to Bezos’ move, and some argue it is only a temporary protest, it should be noted that a grand 100-year-old California daily, the paper where I got my start, the Santa Barbara (Calif.) News-Press, is no more as of this year, due to a takeover by a rightwing mogul out of touch with the community, and that community’s reactions. Similar fates face Bezos and the rightwing owner of the Los Angeles Times now, as well.
Like myself, some are now calling for, if not a serious challenge to The Post, then its forced sale, such as the LGBTQ community’s Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff. The Post, he wrote this week, “Can’t recover from its endorsement debacle,” so “Bezos must sell it.”
But as in the case of my Santa Barbara hometown newspaper, Bezos will more rather simply drive it into the ground. After Tuesday’s election, a revived American public needs to stand ready to back a serious revival of serious journalism in the people’s interest. Democracy cannot stand long without it.
