Winter comes to American newsrooms

Last night, I debated at the Oxford Union, the 201-year-old debating society, and one of the world’s preeminent free speech forums. The setting was spectacular. The library was surreal, and the roster of individuals who have risen in favor or opposition to a motion across the years is mind boggling. It was a deeply humbling experience.

I rose in favor of the proposition that America is a failing democracy. My partner was Kishore Mahbubani, former president of the United Nations Security Council, a Singaporean diplomat, and friend of the American people and United States.

Facing us was my friend Jeh Johnson and Julian Castro, the former Secretaries of Homeland Security and Housing and Urban Development respectively, as well as Leslie Vinjamuri, director at Chatham House.

Both sides were joined by students.

I’m going to write more about the experience, but I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards my public high school teachers at North Plainfield High School in New Jersey. They ignited a passion in me for the things that I have done with my life. That experience has taken me to the places and rooms we once studied in a moment where I was taught above all else that anything was possible in America.

Because of them, my journey took me to Oxford last night. Above all others, two names were on my mind last night: Bill Morgan, my first mentor and social studies teacher, and the incomparable Linda Gannon, who taught us to write and think with exactitude and high expectations.

It turns out that the recording of the debate likely won’t be available next week, but as soon as it is, I will share it with all of you.

Posing in my tuxedo (the required dress code) post-debate at Oxford Union

---

There is a chill descending over America’s corporate newsrooms, driven by fear and Donald Trump’s promises of retribution, harassment and targeting of journalists, opponents and critics.

It will get much icier in the months ahead until what the American people are fed over federally-licensed airwaves is a news version of farina — bland, sanitized and NICE.

During the weeks ahead there will be major revelations about multiple news organizations and decisions by celebrated senior editors at famous news brands over spiked stories — killed because of fear over offending some of the country’s most powerful and extreme political interests.

Being nice to Trump is the expectation of the Trump regime. They will enforce it through threat, bluster and abuses of power.

Who gets to referee the nice line? Where is it? Who defines it?

It’s not Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee. They are gone, and in their place atop a pile of wealth, are some of the softest humans there have ever been that have deluded themselves into thinking that they are wise and strong because they have all the material things that can be had.

The peevish and frightened billionaire news ownership class is as terrified of losing a dollar as some morning show hosts are of losing access to power. The squirming about makes the mutation scenes in Demi Moore’s “The Substance” seem positively calming — therapeutic even. Whomever said cowardice was unsightly certainly hit upon something enduring.

The greatest of all nonsenses in this hour of looming catastrophe is the perverse notion that covering abuses of power requires access to power.

It does not.

It never has.

Last night, Fox “News” held an awards gala to bestow upon Donald Trump the “Patriot of the Year” award. The annual awards “honor and recognize America’s finest patriots, including military veterans, first responders and other inspirational everyday heroes.”

Remember three things:

1. Fox “News” routinely claims in defamation suits that it is not a news organization, and no reasonable person could believe that what it delivers is news. Yes, this is true. Look it up.

2. Fox “News” is a partner in good standing with The New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN when it comes to covering the White House as part of the “pool”.

3. Fox “News” says it isn’t a news organization. It is the NYT, Washington Post and ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN who have declared Fox is wrong about Fox, and that it is a news organization. This is an economic/business decision that hurts the public interest by taking cash to subsidies from Rupert in return for a bestowment of credibility.

It is a conflict of interest for the ages, and it is NEVER written about.

The purpose of the historic evening recognizing Trump as the recipient of the “Patriot of the Year” award is something most news organizations would normally do. Right?

Trump took the stage, and regaled his audience with Justin Trudeau’s mad hatter dash to Mar-a-Lago to beg for Trump’s favor:

Justin came flying right in.

The audience began chanting “51!” referencing Trump’s “joke” at his dinner with Trudeau that Canada could become the 51st US state.

It seems that Trudeau’s Mar-a-Lago Munich moment has titillated Trump’s latent manifest destiny itch:

Having been spurned by Denmark over his proposal to buy Greenland in the first term, it seems Trump has found a new object to desire.

MAGA should know before the fantasy goes much further that all of America’s invasions of Canada fared poorly. Yet, Donald Trump has it within him to make the stupidity of the 1859 “Pig War” seem quaint over the next four years.

We shall see.

I do think that if Canada decided to “Make America Great Again,” dump King Charles, and join the Union it would come in as at least seven different states bringing 14 Democratic senators with it…so there is that.

(Only joking, for our Canadian friends!)

Defying Trump is the only safe route when he makes threats, but it takes some iron in the spine and we live in a gelatinous age.

The Los Angeles Times’ owner is a man named Patrick Soon-Shiong. Before the election, he interfered in his paper’s editorial process, and prevented a presidential endorsement. According to Darcy Oliver, yesterday, he changed his newspaper’s policies, demanding that he review every headline for opinion pieces.

The cause of his concern was offense that may have been given to the richest man in the world, and the president’s un-appointed, unelected sugar daddy, who has taken to routinely threatening his rivals, critics, and competitors, insinuating he controls more than his companies.

Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world and the proprietor of the imploding Washington Post, interfered in his paper’s editorial process, stripping the page of political independence, while attempting to ingratiate himself to Donald Trump with flatteries and noxious kow-towing.

Here is what Bezos said about Trump this week:

What I’ve seen so far is he is calmer than he was the first time — more confident, more settled.

Again, this has nothing to do with civility, grace, optimism or any other justification used by America’s cowed power class. Jeff Bezos is speaking out about Trump because he believes he must in order to protect his Duchy.

Here’s the problem: the American free enterprise system has made America the wealthiest nation in world history and the leading center of discovery, science, medicine and invention because the government doesn’t command the economy. It also certainly doesn’t decide who gets to be in business and who doesn’t on the basis of politics and conscience.

Jeff Bezos should be taking a stand, or say nothing at all. He should sell the Washington Post if he wishes to continue his unseemly boot-licking, which doesn’t just make him look like a fool, but strips the Washington Post of its dignity and credibility.

Over recent years, Jeff Bezos has buffed up and shined his shaved head. He looks little like he once did — a nerdish character dreamed up in a writer's room who would be the first kid in the class to get stuffed in the locker from a bully like Trump. He doesn’t look like that anymore, but inside he must still be that person. A man who has no reason to fear anything fears losing something to a man who can take a bit if he wishes. What is amazing is that he would rather surrender his dignity now than preserve it — should it be necessary later.

He has all the gold that King Midas craved, but he remains a necessitous man. It is pathetic.

The Washington Post masthead, which declares “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” was always tripe, but it has turned into an obscenity.

No.

No, it does not.

Democracy dies of thirst at high noon under a blazing sun.

What kills it is greed, lassitude and cowardice.

What is happening at “Morning Joe” is the most vivid example and the first capitulation that is playing out on television in a very sloppy and obvious manner. Panic creates sloppiness. What the viewer is seeing is a type of thrashing about in the water that makes conditions very dangerous indeed.

Most people drown because of panic, not because they are unable to swim.

Joe Scarborough keeps proving the validity of his critics’ points by talking in long, ludicrous monologues that justify by contradiction the obvious, which he denies. It is a very bad look.

Yes, it is certainly the case that Joe Scarborough was famously one of the US House Republican rebels who deposed Newt Gingrich. He has offered his fearlessness towards Gingrich 25 years ago as evidence of his stalwartness, but the spin falls flat.

Newt isn’t Trump. He doesn’t have teeth, let alone sharp ones. There is a difference between a sloth and a polar bear. It is natural to be afraid of one, but it is the fear that will get you killed — or in Joe’s case cancelled as the show falls into a bland conveyance of information about what the American power class is doing.

“Morning Joe” is trying to get access to administration guests. He’s been told to be NICE. This is why Mika apologized to Fox “News.”

Joe and Mika are capitulants in a type of occupied territory. They are prisoners of their own fears and imagination. Within them, they are on the run, fleeing Hitler, with false papers, on the train, negotiating stop by stop with Gestapo looking at the documents hoping they won’t see what is plainly fake.

Whatever this is called — whether it be a chocolate milkshake or a banana, or maybe a kangaroo — it isn’t journalism.

Serious times have come to America, but they haven’t wrapped their arms around us all yet. That will come. When it does, there must be fearless people who will stand up and tell the truth.

It is astonishing to see so many Americans who are the richest, most powerful and famous amongst us be so weak and timid in defense of their birthright.

When the fear of losing things exceeds the fear of losing liberty because losing liberty can protect things, the abyss is at hand.

Thomas Paine talked about the price of freedom in a dark moment. He asked a question that deserves pondering in the age of Musk, Bezos, Mika and Joe, and a thousand more like them:

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

---

---