Bad Opinions

Last Wednesday, jacked billionaire bookseller and man sized corn dog Jeff Bezos posted on X, The Everything App to announce that from now on writers for the opinion section of his blog, The Washington Post:

The statement was generally viewed as Bezos rolling over to display his toned, rock-hard belly to Donald Trump, and led immediately to the resignation of Opinion editor David Shipley who, after serving as Bezos’ executioner of the newspaper’s would-be endorsement of Kamala Harris and spiking a cartoon critical of Bezos by Ann Telnaes could not quite find within himself a sufficient reserve of obsequity to answer “hell yes” to Jeffy’s vapid new editorial mandate. Poynter’s Angela Fu reported that 75,000 more readers have cancelled their subscriptions, which should probably be considered a win for Bezos, who drove away subscribers in the mid six figures the last time he tried his hand at Opinion editing.

But what is this vapid new editorial mandate, even? No one seems to know. Borrowing a trick from his new daddy Donald Trump, the more closely you read Bezos’ statement the less it seems to say. Everyone feels like they know what it means—in The Verge, Adi Robertson’s post about the announcement carried the shady sub-hed: “Which speech and markets? Oh, you know the ones,” and The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe called the policy “Bezos’s decision to inject more regular and weighty conservative theming,” but is it that?

Has Post Opinion ever been in the habit of publishing a lot of pieces opposing personal liberty and free markets? I’m probably among the furthest left writers to appear there recently, and while they did let me call America “the most powerful and arguably the most violent empire that has ever existed,”¹ even I was writing in defense of freedom and other “characteristically American virtues.” Dana Milbank was one of the first Post columnists to explicitly erect Bezos’ new pillars² by calling out “the single greatest threat to ‘personal liberties and free markets’ in the United States today: President Donald Trump,” so obviously the ideas of liberty and free markets don’t land cleanly on the side of the guy who keeps declaring himself king and just took an axe to a North American free trade deal that he himself negotiated.

All that said, the absolute psychopaths of the Wall St. Journal editorial board do seem miffed. “We welcome the intellectual company,” they wrote, but made it very clear that publishing crackpot libertarian nonsense is kind of their whole thing, and the Post is not really all that welcome, actually. And former Post editor Marty Baron wrote a column in The Atlantic praising Jeff Bezos 2013-2023 Edition’s courage and roasting Jeff Bezos 2024-2025 Edition’s cowardice.

But where else are we to go for national newspaper opinions these days? The L.A. Times owner and B-tier Bezos knock-off Patrick Soon-Shiong just rolled out an A.I. both-sides bot to that paper’s opinion posts, to add important (?) context like ‘what if A.I. is good though?’ to a post about A.I. distorting documentary films, or ‘what if the Ku Klux Klan was just expressing “white Protestant culture?”’ to a post about Anaheim driving the Klan out of town 100 years ago.

And the New York Times? After several years and tens of thousands of words the paper’s steady drumbeat of Just Asking Questions about trans people has borne deadly fruit in Trump’s vicious campaign against transgender lives and existence. But suddenly now a Times Opinion panel has found, in this editorially indefensible and morally repugnant power graph of political importance, that “Trans issues” [sic] are just about the only thing they can agree are inconsequential. Contributing writer Megan Stack attempted what probably counts for the Times as a pro-transgender view:

“First they came for the Communists,” as the famous poem goes, “And I did not speak out since so few lives were materially affected (which is kind of my point).”

I don’t fully understand the moral disease afflicting the Times, but before anyone takes anything they publish seriously again, the paper’s leadership should be required at the very least to account for how much ink it has lavished on an issue that it now disdainfully rates “less consequential.” Until that happens, let’s just wait and see if the New York Times can summon the moral clarity of… oh are you fucking kidding me with this? The moral clarity of Bill Kristol???

I give up.

Today in the Ongoing Catastrophe: J.D. Vance tried to go skiing in Vermont and got roasted by the snow report, other skiers, and everyone in Vermont. Cybertruck owners tried to participate in Mardi Gras and got booed and beaded out of the parade. Also Today in Cybercope. Tesla chargers torched in Massachusetts—that’s Lowell, baby. “Insurance CEO's home riddled with bullets; gunman remains on the run.” T’s & p’s. Scocca: We all live in Uvalde now.

Today in Scientists: Scientists create fuzzy “wooly mammoth” mice. Scientists!

Today in Ligatures: Nite Elds.

From the Tabs Discord: The Argument Ladder and The Argument Ladder Part 2: A Song of Ice and Slogans. “We’re doing a webring!” at webring dot fun.

Today’s Song: Lustra, “Scotty Doesn’t Know”

RIP Michelle Trachtenberg, you were way too young.

And Finally: Today in Tabs’ long-serving Senior Editorial Director for Graphics and Fandom Discourse Alison Headley is raising money for the Missouri Abortion Fund. It’s a very good cause, please consider chipping in to help Missourians access abortion health care.

1  H/t to the GOAT Amanda Katz for defending the hell out of that whole piece.

2  Iykwim 😉