The editorial board of the Washington Post just published one of the worst, most stupifyingly idiotic editorials ever to appear on the pages of the newspaper.
Responding to the incident where the owner of a Red Hen restaurant polled her staff, and then asked Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee to leave the restaurant without being served, the Washington Post has chosen to lecture the nation on incivility.
And buried in the editorial is this gem of prose that proves how oblivious these editors are to the reality of the threats from the right faced by this nation.
We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?
This has to count as one of the absolutely stupidest, mindbendingly ignorant editorials to ever appear on the pages of this newspaper.
Have you forgotten the abortion foes who murder their opponents? Have you forgotten the alt-right criminals who phone in false reports resulting in SWAT teams descending on houses and killing people? Have you forgotten the self-proclaimed Nazis and white supremacists marching in the streets of America? Have you forgotten what has become almost the daily murder by police of young Black men for breathing while being Black?
Have you even read or listened to the horrible, vicious, constant stream of vile words pouring out of the mouth of Trump and his followers, labeling people animals, criminals, and leading this nation into blatant racism, homophobia, sexism, elitism, and violence? We have a president who suggests again and again to his followers at rallies that they assault opponents. We have a president who sounds like Adolf Hitler in 1921, when he adopted fully the raging antisemitism in German culture in the wake of WWI, and made it part of his philosophy and speeches as he rabble roused his way to power. And all of us except the Holocaust deniers among us know how that ended. We have a president who is essentially setting up Kiddie Koncentration Kamps that represent America to the world.
I am retired staff at a major university, and for years a cool benefit was the uni provided me with free subscriptions to NY Times and Washington Post and WSJ. Recently the free sub to Washington Post ended. I chose to cough up money for continued free access. I would not do the same for the NY Times. And after reading this article, I am questioning the fact that my dollars are helping pay for the salary of the idiots who wrote this column.
How anyone looking around them at not just the incivility, but the looming fascism and threats of gulags and violence promised by the right wing and conservative Trumpistas in this country could continue down this insane road of false equivalence and ignore reality just escapes me completely.
Again, this column has to qualify as the absolute worst, most disconnected drivel to ever appear on the editorial page of the Washington Post.
It is like the NY Times reporting on Hitler in his early days of rise to power. He seems like such a reasonable man. They missed the point then. They miss the point now. And the author of this column, well, I wonder how he pulls his pants on without assistance every day.
Charlie Pierce, writing for Esquire, has published a furious rant that best sums up the disgust any thinking person with a shred of morality and dignity must feel at the position taken by the Washington Post editorial board.
“How did any higher primate write this paragraph without coughing up a lung? How did any sentient mammal not red-pencil this paragraph into oblivion? How did Post truck drivers not save their employers severe embarrassment by tossing that entire day’s print run into the Potomac?
For the benefit of those people also living in (WaPo Opinion Editor) Fred Hiatt’s Land Without History: abortion providers have been stalked. Their children have been stalked. Their places of business have been vandalized. And, lest we forget, doctors who perform abortions have been fucking killed! They’ve been gunned down in their clinics, in their kitchens, and in their churches. They have not been allowed to live peaceably with their families, Fred, you addlepated Beltway thooleramawn. They haven’t been allowed to live at all. I’m no expert, but I’m fairly sure that a bullet in the head is far more uncivil than a complementary fucking cheese plate. What is wrong with these people?
I’m old enough to remember the raucous town halls of 2010, when the AstroTurfed forces of the Tea Party shouted down members of Congress while men with automatic weapons strolled around the perimeter of arenas in which the President of the United States was speaking. I’m old enough to remember when N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer of Civilization’s Rules and Leader (Perhaps) of The Civilizing Forces, was working out his Universal Lexicography of Insult for the benefit of a party that ate it up with an entrenching tool. Newt also emerged on the electric Twitter machine over the weekend, leaping to SarahHuck’s defense, and that was nearly enough to make me give up English as a hobby. (snip)
This debate is stupid. It’s also dangerously beside the point. SarahHuck is the lying mouthpiece of a lying regime that is one step away from simply hauling people off in trucks. That she was politely told to take her business elsewhere is a small step towards assigning public responsibility to public officials that enable a perilous brand of politics. There are bigger steps to be taken, but everyone in official Washington is too damn timid to do what really needs to be done about this band of pirates.”
