Just before the election, some time in October as I recall, the Washington Post declared that they would not be issuing their normal presidential election endorsement. That meant that they would not be endorsing Kamala Harris as one would expect. The same decision was taken by the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Both papers announced that their decision was in keeping with their desire to remain neutral arbiters of the news and to not engage in partisanship. Everyone like me thought that was pure bullshit and that the two billionaires (Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong) were simply positioning themselves in the face of a probable Trump victory for a path that would not be oppressive for their papers, given the vindictive nature of Donald Trump, who has gone out of his way to throw recriminations and threats at all manner of the media for any criticism he may have suffered at their hands. In fact, Trump is, right now, bringing a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register for its publication of the erroneous Ann Selzer poll that showed Trump losing the state to Kamala Harris. In fact, the poll was so wrong that it missed by a wide margin the 13+% win that Trump scored there and probably says more about polling failure in these volatile times than it does about biased, fake-news press. Trump’s rejection of any and all criticism has turned many would-be activists into sycophants, and that is where people like me felt Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post found itself in October. I, like hundreds of thousands of other subscribers (250,000 by their estimate), dropped my subscription to WAPO like a hot potato. I know other people who did likewise (thinking of you, Ann).
Today I am catching up on the news, something I do far less frequently than I did before the election. It has been a noted cultural phenomenon among us liberals that we have somewhat abandoned our news sources like MSNBC since the surprising outcome (at least to us) of the election. Kim and I certainly watch FAR less MSNBC than we used to and I even default to more music listening in the car rather than the constant firehose of pre-election news updates that I fed upon for so long. I know that after the 2020 election, Fox News saw a similar decline in viewership, but it regained and even strengthened their demographics within six months. I will be interested to see if the same thing happens to MSNBC, which may be harder to determine given NBC Universal’s desire to shed their cable news franchises. I know we still turn on Morning Joe every day and still go to MSNBC for whatever news we want to get during the day, only we do it all much less often as a result of our disappointment with the whole national political scene at the moment.
The most difficult thing for me has, strangely, not been my reduced access of MSNBC, but my reduced willingness to read the Washington Post. I have always found the WAPO format for news and the timing of their digital delivery modes to be very compelling. My subscription termination was easily accepted (an unusual protocol in this day and age), and has continued on until February 15th, which I assumed at the time was a billing cycle thing, but am now convinced that was a tactical choice on their part. I suspect that experience has taught them that when people get mad at them and unsubscribe, they may very well cool down and seek to re-subscribe. That is exactly where I find myself this morning. I won’t say that I am any less upset about what the Trump win has told me about our national psyche at the moment, or about the people and policies he is endorsing in every news cycle, but I have certainly calmed down about the whole thing. Chaos in the Trump term is already taking shape and roiling our pre-holiday world (think government funding bill). Living in upset may be a new way of life, but it is just no way to live, or at least live on all fronts. Kim has been more upset than me, but I see even her getting more used to the reality of our situation. It’s inevitable. We adapt for the most part. I will not go so far as to become sycophantic about Republicans or Trump’s MAGA pals. I may still try and reorder my T-Shirt that I wore in 2017 which said “I’m Sorry About Our President” in ten languages. But I guess I am less angry at Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post. In the same way that I continue to watch Morning Joe despite Joe & Mika’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, I am preferring to continue to read the Washington Post for its content value and delivery methods than trying to access other news sources.
I just had lunch with two old friends from my banking days. We used to be a gang of four, but sadly, one of our number died unexpectedly several years ago, way before his time. When you get to my age, you start getting used to friends and even family members reaching their end, but this friend’s death still hangs over our gang like a pall. None of us can completely reconcile how such a relatively young, energetic and vital person can suddenly be gone….and yet the world has been going on for the last three years as though nothing has changed. And here’s the reality, the world does go on, the world is supposed to go on, and, yes, the world should go on without a blip. We should all hope for and want that. If I go before these other two friends, both of whom are younger enough than me that only a tragedy should prevent that from being the case, I want them to meet and lift a toast to both of us fallen soldiers, and then carry on telling funny stories, just like we did today, even if they are at my expense…maybe especially so. We need to get over our friend’s demise and I want them to get over mine, whenever that should come.
One of the things that bonds us as friends is our common perspective on politics, and we spent plenty of time in this first gathering since the election on the topics du jour, to which both the hours of MSNBC coverage and the pages of WAPO still dedicate themselves. We didn’t discuss it at lunch since we were too busy laughing ourselves silly over our recollection of times past and the craziness of the moment, but we were all working hard to get over it…whether it was our upset over our lost comrade or our lost hope for a caring nation and world for the next few years. Before we knew it, a noon lunch date had turned into a 4pm tea time. Very rarely am I surprised by the passage of time, but I must admit that I was shocked when I was forced to realize that we had spent four hours laughing and talking about nothing. Life is too short not to enjoy it and I cannot imagine enjoying a gathering more than I did with these two old friends. Kim reminded me that the last time she heard me so enthusiastic about a meeting with friends was when I had returned a few years ago from a breakfast that the four of us (including our lost friend), had had and had also gone on for hours and hours. What this tells me is that our smaller group is getting over it. We are getting over all of our losses and we are moving on.
I have now reactivated my subscription to my favored news source, the Washington Post. Thank you Jeff Bezos, you son-of-a-bitch, for keeping it safe. Thank you, my two banking pals, for keeping the memory of our collective friend safe.