Besides Chuck Schumer
Ahead of Tuesday’s New York City election won decisively by Zohran Mamdani, the Washington Post Editorial Board published a hit piece on him. Those who worried that the purchase of the Post by Jeff Bezos would seriously degrade the paper’s jounalism have their worst fears confirmed. Comically, in a fashion worthy of The Onion.
“Zohran Mamdani’s success is a warning,” the lead opinion blared. “How did a socialist with almost no governing experience become New York’s mayoral frontrunner?” the Post asks.
A reader not in Donald Trump’s pocket might ask instead, how did a philandering, career con-man with no governing experience, strings of ex-wives and bankruptcies, and a “university” courts closed as a fraud become president of the United States? And a second time after having his charity shuttered as a personal slush fund, two impeachments, 34 felony convictions, four criminal indictments, and a violent insurrection?
But the Post wasn’t done humiliating itself:
One of the most notable aspects of Mamdani’s political success is that voters know what they’re getting. The young politician was born into a life of wealth and privilege, and from that perch he adopted a worldview centered around destroying the economic system that made his adopted country thrive.
Strike Mamdani and insert Trump and you’ve got the man who invited billionaires like Bezos to stand behind him at the presidential inauguration on January 20. Days later, Trump himself set about destroying the economic system that made this country thrive. Ask American soybean farmers if they are thriving now. Somehow the Post missed all that and without a hint of irony raised the alarm about a man who wants to set up five not-for-profit groceries.
Mamdani “has had only one full-time job outside of politics,” the Post warns. Outside of reality TV, Donald Trump had never worked outside his small family business before the Oval Office.
Bezos will champion “personal liberties and free markets” whatever it does to his paper’s credibility. Including with editorials arguing for unfettered markets because “many American failures are often the result of government intervention rather than a free market run amok.” Tell it to the nearly 9 million people who lost their jobs and at least 10 million who lost their homes in the 2008 crash of Wall Street.
Michael Tomasky almost condemned the Post after it published “In defense of the White House ballroom.” But after “the recent hiring of three conservative columnists” this one on Mamdani cinched it. He lets loose at The New Republic:
The nation’s capital, a city that is the seat of the federal government and home to many thousands of public servants, and a city that Democratic presidential candidates generally carry with around 90 percent of the vote, has three conservative voices and no longer has a single liberal newspaper.
Right-wing owners are buying up major news outlets from coast to coast. “We are at most a few years away from the mainstream media becoming controlled top to bottom, with a few very exceptions, by ultrarich conservatives and their hirelings,” Tomasky writes.
What is to be done? Well, some say this doesn’t really matter that much—people get their news from TikTok, so liberals should focus on social media, podcasts, YouTube. I have no beef with this argument. Liberals are way behind conservatives in these realms. But legacy media outlets still matter because of who reads them. And they are being taken over by right-wing and libertarian billionaires who want quite simply to destroy the idea of the public weal.
So this is what is to be done: Rich liberals need to get together, see all this for the democracy-ending crisis that it is, and pool tens of millions of dollars into an organization that will buy existing media outlets (traditional and social) and start new ones. They have been asleep to this problem for 20-plus years. Well, as one of my favorite proverbs has it, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second-best time is now. If The Washington Post becoming right-wing doesn’t make these people want to take spade in hand and plant some trees, what on earth will?
Except too many rich liberals are like old-guard Democrats. Too out of touch and short-term in their thinking.
(h/t IW)
Update: Corrected spelling of Bezos.
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