Well, yeah. Every Republican making sad faces about this is full of shit.
And yet, this asshole was working at the NYT. Which is very much not okay, and those guys have got some explaining to do.
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Every publication has to worry about credibility and legitimacy, even in normal times. It comes with the territory, and I assume that instinct is baked into the NYT.
Part of what makes Trump’s villainy so effective is that a lot of actors in the public sphere believe that throwing in against Trump will alienate his supporters and allies. “Picking sides” feels dangerous to publishers who have historically swum in the mainstream.
Trump is the GOP’s most outrageous attempt to make lunacy and evil mainstream, and the brilliance of it is that, by making him president, they force everyone to make that calculation: is this a bridge too far? will I lose my credibility by denouncing him?
Elevating Trump has created a situation in which anything short of firm, confident adherence to a moral compass results in tacit or explicit normalization and approval of Trump. That includes everything from venality, cowardice, and self-interest, to confusion, ignorance, gullibility, and laziness. It’s kind of a masterstroke. I know a lot of fine people, but I’d only describe a tiny minority of them as “positively virtuous.” *
It’s essentially Virtue losing to Vice in a slow-motion run-off election, because everything in between either breaks for Vice or withdraws from the race.
* ETA an anecdote illustrating my point:
A few years ago I worked for a tiny startup: 4 workers + the CEO/funder. One day he “invents” a product that was already a standard feature on every iPhone & Android phone, and he wants us all to come in on Sunday and build the entire thing in a single day. It was a grueling marathon instead of the rest we all needed from working startup hours during the week.
He goes around the room, asking people if they’re willing to come in. I already knew from talking to each of them privately that they all thought the idea was pointless and a Sunday marathon was a needless hardship. Every one of them was married, all but one had children. And yet, every one of them dutifully said they’d do it. I was the only person who said, “this is unnecessary, foolish, and I won’t do it.” I still don’t understand it. I’m shocked they even entertained the idea, especially since I’d already told a couple that I would refuse, and thus that they wouldn’t be lone holdouts.
Every one of them was willing to bend over, even though all of them were opposed to it. I was honestly sickened.
This is what I mean when I talk about firm, confident adherence to a moral compass, and how plenty of fine people willingly surrender at the first hint of a showdown.
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Rascal Crone's Appeal
We’ll never be able to stymie,
His flow of remarks that are slimy.
If you’re aching for worse,
Than his odious verse,
The answer’s quite simple: Just try me.
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Oh, irasdad! You’re beginning to sound like one of those crazily naive corporate Democrats who give speeches to Wall Street bankers, have nation-destroying email servers in your linen closet, and use the DNC to rig a primary election against a fair-weather Democratic candidate!
Don’t you know that Nancy Pelosi and Jerry Nadler are conspiring with Mitch McConnell and the RNC to keep Trump in office until Ivanka is ready to take over the reins of power?
Silly corporate shill!
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Also? “Reviewing next steps” is fine. For a couple days. But it is not okay to have a raging anti-semite working as an editor at your paper. And if NYT thinks that it is, they’re sending a powerful message that we’re all obligated to hear.
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You think a 30 year old journalist is in the upper echelons of corporate power?
He is in mid-level content creation for a large media organization.
From August 2018 here is a blurb describing his role at NYT:
Joining Lisa (Lerer) in the newsletter adventure will be Tom Wright-Piersanti , who has moved from Metro, where he had a great run editing the New York Today newsletter. Tom has joined Politics as our newsletter editor and our cool-calm-collected night editor.
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Edward R. Murrow was lionized as a hero of journalism when he stood up against Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, something that very, very few people were brave enough to do at that time. He saw McCarthy as a danger to the freedoms and the rule of law enshrined in the Constitution, and also a threat to justice and fairness in this country.
Trump is even more of a threat than McCarthy ever was, although he still has the full servility of the GOP just like McCarthy did during his reign of lies and persecution.
But I wonder: if Murrow were alive today and worked for the NYT and mounted the same kind of fervent reaction against Trump, I ask myself how long he’d last there? I doubt very much if someone like Murrow would write a story about the “existential crises” Trump faces when committing his atrocities accompanied by a Glamor Shot of the president.
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yeah, he is a midlevel schmoe at an august media outlet. Certainly a great job if you are a journalist, but hardly an important figure. Sounds like he was willing to work the graveyard shift
Second, in 2009 2010 he was in or just leaving college. Was he really a hard core anti-semite who broadcasted that in public or are these stupid jokes he is writing to his (maybe Jewish) friends. I have no idea. The “mohawk indians” line is clearly a bad pun. The “Jew police” was maybe honorable mention in that caption writing contest for a photo of car with a menorah on top. Third prize was, “honey slow down, we haven’t finished saying the brocha.” Second prize, “you know what would be a real miracle, if I didn’t have to get a lousy oil change every 3 months.”
Besides everyone knows the Sulzbergers are disloyal.
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Who the fucks knows.
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“Joining Dean Baquet here at the NYT as executive editorial assistant is 19-year-old Stan Wudjablomi, who has spent the last three years as an editorial consultant at Bazooka Joe Comics. Stan has joined the editorial staff to show that we’ll hire anyone because we really don’t give a flying fuck what our readership thinks, since we’re going to keep coasting on the reputation that we actually destroyed in the 1990s during the Whitewater scandal and with Judy Miller during the run-up to the Iraq War.”
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That look of shock may never leave your face on account of this. Un-leader Moscow Mitch says can’t we all just get along.
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And everyone knows the Russians were under orders from Thanos , The Queen of England the Tri-lateral Commission…
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Trolling along with the trolling tumbleweeds
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IANAP but the occupant is nuts.
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If I said TPM used to have much wittier and trenchant commenters would I hurt your feelings?
Lots of enormously talented people work at NYT, and some people not so much.
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Oh, SNAP!
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Did they fire you? Asking for a friend
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Everything is or should be on the table.
If not…
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