Monday, May 01, 2017

My First Amendment Right To A New York Times Column (At Very High Pay)

Was busy over the weekend so I didn't really have time to deal with this, but the New York Times felt compelled to hire its 3rd pretends-to-be-anti-Trump white male conservative columnist in the name of diversity in an opinion section that has (and has had) almost no women and has one person of color and has never had a woman who was a person of color. As for viewpoint diversity, Krugman is as left as they get and (in fairness) on the right they actually don't have anyone who admits to being a Trumpkin. Libturds point out that the new guy has a history of bigotry of the acceptable in America variety - anti-Arab bigotry - and that he was a climate change denier whose denialism takes the usual respectable form, which is something like "I know more than scientists who could be wrong and really stop being so mean about it libturds." Aside from being the kind of boring stupid stuff that Jonah Goldberg farts out regularly, and which can be found from any lesser college Republican college newspaper columnist, it's, you know, ignorant and factually wrong.

Libturds throw a fit, being a bit annoyed after the "subscribe to us because good journalism necessary Trump scary" scam the NYT pulled after helping Trump win the election, and start threatening to and/or actually cancelling subscriptions. NYT people responded by berating all of the liberals, somethingsomething intolerance somethingsomething snowflakes can't stand hearing other OPINIONS somethingsomething YOU DIDN'T EVEN READ THE COLUMN somethingsomething SOMUCHFORFREESPEECH. All stupid. It's a profit-making company which is also a Brand, and the Brand is We Do Important Journalism, and the success of this brand seems to require making liberals happy enough to get them to pay money for subscriptions while keeping advertisers happy enough to keep them buying advertising (recognizing that the subscriptions are more about eyeballs for advertisers than the subscription money). These things are apparently in conflict. That's my non-cynical explanation. My cynical one is the powers that be actually like the stuff which the new white guy they hired writes, which means they're stupid conservative assholes. Either way.

Objecting to all of this has nothing to do with intolerance or freedom of speech or safe spaces or whatever, it's about not wanting to pay bigots who lie about climate change and will help ensure that coastal cities will be underwater sooner rather than later. Finally liberals are a bit tired of the "give us money so we can pay Jonah Goldberg" pitch NPR has been giving them for years, and the liberal media never actually being liberal. What's so funny is how butthurt journalists get when liberals criticize them, despite the fact that criticizing the "liberal media" has been a conservative schtick forever. I know why this is, and for ONE MILLION DOLLARS I will tell you, but I think it's funny that they never seem to think about why that is.