CSotD: Darkness at News

There have been a number of cartoons responding to Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos having spiked an endorsement for Kamala Harris, many of them playing on the Post’s motto “Democracy Dies in the Dark.”

Ann Telnaes gets the top spot in part because she works there and her cartoon joins with 16 Washington Post columnists who signed an outraged statement protesting the move, which is reason enough, but also because while she is perennially one of the most inventive political cartoonists, she knows when it’s time to be plainspoken.

And her fans recognize her outrage, as the comments on her page indicate.

The fact that the Post has published protests over the topic — from both staff and readers — is encouraging, because it indicates a chasm between the people who make the paper and the man who owns it, and that there is a difference between doing what you’ve been ordered to do and behaving like a lickspittle.

Cartoonists at other outlets, of course, are speaking up as well:

RJ Matson depicts a sunset of honesty and courage, and a willingness to go dark rather than take risks to defend democracy.

Clay Bennett (CTFP) draws darkness and a candle not extinguished but never even lighted. The Washington Post is a powerful tool, but not if its owner refuses to use it.

Both Washpo and the LA Times have seen resignations as their billionaire bosses order them not to endorse Kamala Harris, and it’s important that both papers intended a Harris endorsement.

This sudden appetite for “neutrality” is a puppet show, and it’s hard to believe either oligarch would have stepped in to kill a Trump endorsement.

Dave Whamond goes straight to the explanation, which is not some grand desire to be neutral but rather a cowardly desire to stay out of trouble, bearing in mind that this isn’t an election about who will be the better president but rather whether we will continue as a constitutional democracy.

As Patrick Chappatte notes, Trump has plainly stated the fact that he is willing to cancel parts of the Constitution he doesn’t like, that he wants to investigate and prosecute those who disagree with him, including both media figures and elected officials, and that once he’s in office, we won’t need further elections.

That’s not a guess or an interpretation: He said it, and now the head of the Freedom Caucus has seriously proposed that North Carolina’s legislature vote to give its 16 Electoral College votes to Trump before the election.

We’ve reached a point where Australian cartoonist Glen LeLievre doesn’t need to do anything more to get his point across than draw Hitler with tiny hands and a familiar shadow.

Remember when we thought this meme was funny? Who’s laughing now? And don’t say Mike Pence because he is not only off the ticket but has declined to endorse his former runningmate.

The term being used is “anticipatory obedience,” which is to say that the owners of the LA Times and Washington Post are withholding endorsements of Harris because they’re afraid of what will happen to them if they infuriate Donald Trump and he wins.

David Frum is one of a number of conservatives who aren’t buying arguments about neutrality, and his condemnation of their cowardice contains an important subtext: Several observers have pointed out that endorsements have a very limited impact and aren’t apt to change many votes.

But killing an endorsement for Harris may send a stronger message than running it would have.

If you want to live in a world in which the president dictates — that’s the correct verb — what appears in your newspaper and on your TV, you can either vote for Donald Trump or just stay home and let him win by default.

We’re told the race is tied, and that might be the best way to motivate people to vote, but RJ Matson questions the validity of polls, given the number of people who don’t answer phone calls from unfamiliar numbers.

There are other issues with polling, including a rash of conservative push-polls in which the questions lead people to the pollster’s desired responses, but there is also the question of whether those who declare themselves undecided truly are wondering who to vote for or are not likely voters at all and claim to be undecided so they will sound engaged and intelligent.

I was looking for something else yesterday and stumbled across this Rex Babin cartoon from 2000. We’ve always had undecided voters and I think Babin was right: There’s little point in counting them because the bulk of them will never come to a decision in time.

It certainly doesn’t help the process when BC (Creators) fuels the false notion that nobody has faith in the system. Quislings and paranoid mooncalves don’t; the rest of us do.

Undermining the system is not confined to the funny pages or shock jock podcasts. Last Friday, NPR had a story on All Things Considered in which they discussed what a dozen people who previously didn’t like either candidate were thinking now.

Another bogus horserace report in which a statistically insignificant number of people are interviewed as if they represented some major demographic group.

Mara Laisson admitted the process was “anecdata,” but her recognition that the exercise is largely meaningless didn’t stop them from airing the results.

I finally turned off the radio when one of the Twelve Chosen Ones said

From what I’ve seen and read, one of the big problems that the country has with her is that, other than what’s readily available in her book, we don’t know a whole lot about her.

Yes, indeed, that’s what he’s seen and read because that’s what reporters and columnists and commentators keep saying and writing, just as they keep saying the economy is bad despite all the evidence that, in fact, it’s not just rebounding but doing quite well.

Though JD Vance said on CNBC that if immigration was the path to prosperity, then “America would be the most prosperous country in the world.”

Which it is, but we mustn’t tell the voters.

Meanwhile, today’s Sufi Comics might have been written with Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong in mind:

“He has succeeded who purifies it (the soul), and
he has failed who instills it with corruption.”
Quran (91:9-10)