We have lived to see a day and age where even Fox News puts capitalism above cronyism and ironically, in doing so, puts the truth above placating the powers that be; because if somebody makes a truthful ad (think Lincoln Project) Fox will run it for the going rate and devil take anybody who disagrees with the content. Maybe the people at Common Cause, who bought an ad spread critical of Elon Musk from the Washington Post, and then got told where to stick it, should just go straight to Fox News. They’ve demonstrated time and again that if your money’s good, that’s all that matters. The Washington Post may have followed a similar code of ethics at one time, but not now. Now it is deserving of the descriptor “Bezos Bugle.”
The Washington Post this week backed out of a “Fire Elon Musk” advertising order that was to run as a wrap on some of its Tuesday editions, according to the advocacy group Common Cause.
The group said it signed a $115,000 agreement with The Post to run the ad that would have covered the front and back page of the Tuesday paper as well as a full-page ad with the same theme inside the paper. It said it planned to purchase the ad in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund. […]
The paper with the wrap ad was supposed to be delivered to subscribers at the Congress, Pentagon and the White House.
“We submitted the artwork back on Tuesday of last week. I’m assuming it went through a legal department or other kind of review. They said, ‘You can have something inside the paper but you can’t do the wrap.’ We said thanks, no thanks because we had a lot of questions,” Kase Solomón told The Hill. […]
“It just causes concern for us. Are they fearful of his reaction?” she said of Trump.
She cited The Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race and its decision not to run a cartoon showing caricatures of Bezos, Mickey Mouse and others offering bags of money to a large, statuesque Trump figure.
I think the handwriting has been on the wall for quite some time. The Washington Post of yore is gone. Now instead of “Democracy Dies In Darkness” they promise “riveting storytelling” — but only if it won’t upset you know who and his pals. And I’m serious as a heart attack about anti-Musk groups going to Fox news, because Fox is completely fine with playing both sides of the street. And in point of fact, the people that watch Fox News are probably exactly the people who should be pondering this question of who is running the government.
Gone are the days of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Now we have the Bezos Bugle in town. And it’s not the same paper, or the same town.
Trump’s chaos and treachery has become normalized. It is now normal for somebody like Pete Hegseth to make a complete ass out of himself and the United States, during a press conference abroad, and for somebody like Senator Roger Wicker to suggest that maybe Tucker Carlson wrote the speech.
It is now normal for the vice president of the United States to be advocating a far-right neo-Nazi political group in Germany — and saying so to Olaf Stolz, the chancelleor, and other German officials.
None of this was normal nine, ten years ago. We had a functioning government and a functioning press — until Trump came along and crippled both with his knowledge of the Republican id and how to work television. And so that’s the new reality that we live in today.
Depend upon independent journalism. Because the big media outlets have been sold to the highest bidder. This is just one more example of how true that is.
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And Musk is furious about journalists daring to criticize him or questioning the legality of DOGE and his actions. He thinks they should be fired and wonders if their writing was criminal.activity.
No, Elon, not kowtowing and intoning, “The Universe? That was a good one” is not a crime.But your little thugs without security value clearances and absolutely no training in the law having access to Treasury Department and IRS files may be.