I’m glad to see that the increasingly abysmal Washington Post, aka the “Kaplan Post,” is getting the honor it so richly deserves; namely, being named #2 on the 2012 Salon “Hack List”. As the Post’s Chris Cillizza likes to say, “congrats…or something!” LOL
The Post can’t decide if it’s local or national, with editors and publishers offering a series of conflicting and contradictory statements of intent over the last decade. The paper closed its major national bureaus a few years ago, but it also fails to extensively cover local news. What it seems to think it should be is a newspaper dedicated to covering politics and the federal government. D.C. already has three or four of those, which would seem to suffice, but politics is the paper’s brand, and what brings national traffic to the website.
The Washington Post has the worst opinion section of any major newspaper in the country. It’s actually baffling to me how bad it is. It doesn’t seem that difficult to simply not publish a bunch of liars, hacks and incredibly boring old men, but the Post can’t seem to figure it out.
Receiving specific mention for being “liars” and “hacks” are:
1) Climate change denier and all-around liar George Will, who “predicted Romney would win 321 electoral votes.” Bottom line: nobody who denies science, whether it’s about the climate or evolution or gravity or whatever, should be writing regularly on the opinion pages of what purports to be (but increasingly is anything but) a major newspaper. #FAIL
2) Charles Krauthammer, who “spent the election (and the preceding four years) nattering about Obama’s imaginary “apology tour” and pretending the return of the borrowed Churchill bust was a “snub” to Great Britain and claiming that Romney handily and clearly won all three debates and pretending Obama is a far-left radical who is putting America on the road to ‘European-style social democracy…exactly the same bullshit as Rush and Dinesh D’Souza.” It’s sad, because years and years ago I used to like Krauthammer, but he’s sunk into a vicious, nasty, increasingly unhinged old age. It’s sad, really, but the bottom line is he shouldn’t be writing for a serious newspaper of any kind. Get him outta there!
3) Finally, of course we can’t forget the most abysmal, unprofessional, despicable, lying, hackish “writer” (using the word VERY loosely) at the Kaplan Post: Jennifer Rubin. As Salon’s Alex Pareen puts it: Rubin “effectively admitted to shilling for Romney, and writing things she knew to be inaccurate, in her role as ostensibly an independent conservative commentator. It should’ve been hugely embarrassing for the Post, and Fred Hiatt, the man who hired her. No one seems to care.”
Unfortunately, as I’ve pointed out previously and as Pareen concludes here, the Post isn’t ditching these “writers” despite their demonstrable (and demonstrated, time and again) incessant lying, unprofessionalism, willful ignorance, and overall hackitude. Why not? Because, as Pareen puts it, “there are simply never any professional consequences for being constantly wrong or dishonest” in today’s “American punditocracy.” Ugh.
P.S. Pareen doesn’t even mention the incessant, relentless attempts at setting conventional wisdom “narrative” by the Post, and the fact that in 2012 at least, they were wrong about nearly everything. No, the Romney-Obama race wasn’t a “dead heat.” No, Romney didn’t have “momentum” (except perhaps for a week or two after the first debate). No, the Republican Party isn’t a normal, conservative party anymore – it’s a bunch of John Birch Society loons and extremists. No, the Post’s preferred pollsters weren’t any better – in fact they were worse! – than many robopolls and even internet polling. No, inside-the-Beltway “conventional wisdom” doesn’t bear any connection to what most people really think, let alone to the policy choices we need to be making. Etc, etc.
P.P.S. I’m off to read about the winner of 2012’s “hack list” competition – Politico. A well-deserved, albeit dubious, honor no doubt.
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