Coop Scoop Special Election Bulletin #3 : The Washinton Post Capitulates to Tump

Just like the LATimes it abstains from endorsing the anti-fascist candidate

Oct 26, 2024

By Marc Cooper

Major American institutions are already in the process of capitulating to a new Trump administration even before or if it is elected.  These are some big time cowards and despicable corporate leaders.  Some of the tech bros were among the first to pledge loyalty to Trump some moths ago,

A few days ago it was the LATimes that began the expected capitulation of major media institutions to Donald Trump who they apparently are betting he will win (though we should really give first place to Russian asset Elon Musk who has turned Twitter into the primary media arm of Trump disinfo along with an army of Kremlin bots.  Really no reason to refer to Twitter as media, it is now a political operation.).

The billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times killed what would have been an endorsement of Harris by his own editorial board --- which in a rare case reports to him not to the Editor-in-Chief.  The paper issued no endorsement. The owner posted an unwittingly hilarious “clarification” on Twitter, carefully written in a CYA passive voice that the fool didn’t even realize was admitting HE was the guilty party.  That should be self- evident when you read it.

The owner, billionaire Patrick Shoon-Shiong has no background in journalism but is worth $10 billion dollars.   The non endorsement was hard to immediately understand until a few more facts leaked out.  Like PSS is butt buddies with Minister of Propaganda Elon Musk and has been reported to be “in conversations” with Trump about becoming a Senior Health Policy [sic] advisor to a re-elected bag of fetid gas.  The dying LATimes has no outstanding record on covering Trump in any critical way and PSS clearly wants to stay off his media hit list.  OK, Patrick. Just don’t expect anybody to come rescue you when Trump eventually turns on you. A wave of cancelled subs are washing into the Times from its very Democratic reader base.  Here is the carefully written but failed to clarify  anything except this was HIs decision. Period

Notice it is written in the passive voice. The .tweet implies the edit board just punted. But if you read it properly where the word “provided” appears it means PSS ordered them. And he ordered them to write a non-partisan side by side comparison of the candidate. Since when isx an endorsement “non-partisan.” The edit board properly decided to not compromise its integrity and its punt was a fuck you to the blockhead owner who knows nothing about journalism.

Read this open letter from the union of the LATimes editorial staff where they clearly call out PSS for his bullshit version of what happened.

The top opinion editor, the only woman Latina editor in a city that speaks as much SPANISH as English is one more indicator of the gap between the paper and its city, has resigned.

Worse news came today because it came from a much better paper, The Washington Post.  Billionaire owner  Jeff Bezos refused to publish his own staff endorsement of Harris or of anybody else.  The PR flacks mumbled something about the Post returning to its roots and will no longer endorse in the future either…if it has one. This is the first time in modern history that the Post abstains and it came with some PR mumbo jumbo that explains nothing and Bezos isn’t saying much.

The Post has had a contentious relationship wirh the Post whose excellent staff have broken a ton of stories exposing Trunp’s many foibles and crimes.  And the WaPost is high on Trump’s hit list.

I might be wrong and I have no facts or sources, just a hunch. This is another pre-capitulation to Trump by the WaPo in the hope that if elected he might spare them a frontal attack.  New slogan for the Post:

DEMOCACY DIES IN COWARDICE

There were also two articles in the Post written about the capitulation, to its minor credit.  But reports says cancellations are in the thousands along with angry letters from readers. Semafor repots 2500 cancellations in the fist 24 hrs. And a letter of condemnation from almost all the WaPo columnists.

The Guardian has the most complete story on Bezos' capitulation. Read it.,\

The former and now retied exectuve editor Marty Baron called out this atrocity. Good for him. 

Some comic relief. The self-styled leaading pub of the American Left, The Nation, published an editorial today signed by its intern staff (!) condemning the endorse\ment the mag made of Harris and making a call to not vote fo Harris. They ae not billionaires, they are young interns from mostly elite colleges. They, of course, demaded thee should by be no voting fo thoee respoinsibke for the “genocide” in Gaza. Thet make clear they want to no voytes for Tump but the best way to beat his is to vote for Kamala. I guess there isn’t enough self-virtue in such a pragmatic vote,

When I was their age I did similar dumb things like boycotting the 1968 election over Vietnam and we wound up with Dick Nixon. These young people have a right to their opinion and a right to make it public. But without sounding too muv=ch like a snob, these interns who have no public profile or record and in the end what credibility to they bing to this?

Within the wider Nation universe there are a couple of six packs of distinguished and higly experienced writers and academics spanning the an ideolgical universe of the Middle East. Sorry, I would rathe hear from them then from a bunch of young people I don’t know and who have no public record of cedibilty

They are kids, from my 73 yea old perspective, The editors and the publishes are not. They are a different set of cowards and having written for the Nation from 1995 to 2010 I know what I am talking about, The Nation is basically a liberal/lsocial democratic publication (Think Bernie in Pint) but it remains infected with the decades old disease of “no enemies to the left.” Get out your electron microscope to find any serious Nation criticism of ANY aspect of anything that calls itself the left. and thats why this intern letter was published — not even with a sidebar counter column from an experienced expert on the region.

No publication I can think of would allow a signed editorial from its intern staff to appear in its own publications to criticize its staff decision. It simply means a further degradation of editorial standards while the mag is simultaneously publishing much lower quality writers and no longer has any superstar analysts. With a few notable exceptions ( Elie Mystal and Chris Lehmann) there aint much there. If I were running the Nation I would call in the interns and tell them if they think the magazine is immoral in endorsing Killer Kamala maybe they should just quit and go back to their dorms. If the Nation is complicit in genocide by endorsing Harris, as it did, and the interns there really do help with editorial production (as they do( are they not also complicit, by their own twisted standards.

Im going to repeat this one idea because you might have missed it. The interns have a right to their opinion. They have a right to publish it and make it public. But the magazine has no obligation to publish it in its own mag and ten days fom a referendum on fascism. Publish it somewhere else, interns. We don't know you, tust you ar cae vey much you have to say. Tough words, I know. But true.

The interns thing is a minor issue but portends poorly for a Trump future if that is in the cards. If the leading left publication makes such feckless decisions as this one, what kind of mature and serious opposition will it offer when really needed? I won’t know because I let my subscription lapse last week.

Ten days away from an election between a centrist Democrat and an indicted, convicted criminal who is clearly mentally unfit to be a dog catcher and who aspires to dictatorship, the beacon of the left unleashes its interns to not vote against the fascist? Sad. Pathetic. and Tragi-comic.

The US in 2024 is not Germany in 1932. Lots of differences. There might be a few less after November. But it took only weeks for every official German institution to quietly capitulate to Nazi power. Within months the German Afmy pledge was changed from pledging loyalty to the nation and instead to the person of Adolph Hitler. Ring any bells?

Here’s a thought experiment: If Tump is elected and sets up authoritarian rule short of hard dictatorship and retains a thin patina of “democracy,” what can we expect from the media. Will any but the small alternatives step up to be an authentic opposition paper openly defending democracy and condemning openly the slide to fascism? Or will their bosses and editors be clinking cocktail glassses with the White House Trumpies and in print continue to treat him as a sort of normal “conservative Republican”. We know the answer. And that obedience will make no impression on Tump if he moves to full dictatorship, seizes the Washington Post and names Elon Musk as publisher if not overseer of the entire White Christian National press? Then again, we will be able to count on The Nation interns to lead the battle against fascism because that would be really virtuous +

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