It's been an extremely embarrassing week for newspaper opinion pages

[Nevilledog]

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Aaron Rupar
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New in Public Notice: From defending Proud Boys to justifying the rollback of reproductive rights, it's been an extremely embarrassing week for newspaper opinion pages (by @samthielman)

aaronrupar.substack.com
It's been an extremely embarrassing week for newspaper opinion pages
From defending Proud Boys to justifying the rollback of reproductive rights, they're in lockstep with the GOP's race to the bottom.
9:09 AM · Jul 11, 2022

https://aaronrupar.substack.com/p/melissa-radovich-karen-tumulty-opinion-pages

Over the weekend, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune published a guest op-ed by a woman named Melissa Radovich initially titled “Don't vilify Sarasota Proud Boys for caring about their children.” The Proud Boys, a racist paramilitary group present at acts of far-right political violence from the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, have enjoyed close connections with prominent Republicans for many years. They also apparently enjoy close connections at the 97-year-old Gannett-owned Herald-Tribune: Radovich’s husband, Nicholas Radovich, is a Proud Boy. (The article had been scrubbed from the Herald-Tribune’s website by Monday morning.)

It would be a great relief to say that the Florida-based Herald-Tribune is an isolated malefactor in its abuse of its opinion pages to run cover for violent far-right extremism, but in fact it is merely following the lead set by the Washington Post, Politico, and the New York Times, among many others. The trend seems to be part of a growing sense in American political media that, because the hard right is ascendant, it has become necessary not just to understand their perspective but to broadcast it in a show of good faith so that these publications can remain part of the national conversation, even as the nation itself tips into the sea.

It is one thing to run opinion pieces and hire columnists who contend that our national problems can be solved with lower taxes, deregulation, and strong public morals. It is quite another to announce that those morals necessitate the persecution of disenfranchised minority groups, the establishment of public religion, and the end of the right to privacy.

Opinion pages triangulate against our politics of despair

Karen Tumulty, the deputy editor of the Post’s opinion page, devoted her most recent column to praising Glenn Youngkin, whose first official act as governor was to sign an executive order banning schools from teaching critical race theory and whose latest antics include proposing a 15-week abortion ban in the wake of the Supreme Court’s destruction of Roe v. Wade. The Times’s Pamela Paul bemoaned the entirely invented but nevertheless terrifying prohibition on the word “woman,” comparing trans-inclusive language to the end of Roe. The next day, the Times published a guest essay by an anti-abortion writer explaining that her own abortion had been perfectly moral; it added to columnist Ross Douthat’s celebration of the end of Roe, a column on fetal personhood by a conservative lawyer, and a bizarre piece by yet another pro-lifer playing distasteful games with maternal mortality statistics. Politico ran a lengthy piece by a Republican operative on the premise that Tucker Carlson might be a good candidate for president.

*snip*

[MyOwnPeace]

1. Well, yeah, that's the 'Liberal' press for 'ya..........

PS: That 'Liberal Press' bullshit has more believers than the 'Tooth Fairy' or the 'Easter Bunny!'

[flying_wahini]

2. They are grasping at straws. They know their day of reckoning is coming.

Anything that has ‘Proud Boys’ on it will be reason enough to toss in the garbage.

If they really believe it they wouldn’t be scrubbing their posts. I find most of the opinions in the DFW area are infested with Trumpies. I don’t even read them anymore.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. Corporations do not want their takeover undone.

[IngridsLittleAngel]

4. Even more embarrassing than usual, you mean

We can always count on the "mainstream press" to be embarrassing. Whether it's presenting "both sides" on shit that there aren't two sides on (like human rights), or spreading outright hate, or bashing Biden because he's "not as fun and exciting as Drumpf," we can always count on the media to show their asses... Especially since, of course, there is no "liberal media" in this country. At all.

But last week was a real doozy... From that hateful and transphobic NYT piece, to the Herald-Tribune trying to defend the Proud Incels as "concerned parents," it really does seem like the mediots really worked hard to outdo themselves. They seem to be hard at work trying to normalize all of the hatred and bigotry and chaos that we had hoped to escape when we fired Drumpf in 2020... Instead of escaping it, it's getting worse thanks to alt-right Nazis. And our "fourth estate" really wants to help make it the new normal.

Shame on our media.