In a recent issue of Andrew Sullivan’s The Weekly Dish, in the “Money Quotes of the Week” section, Andy gave us the following tweet from Harvard linguist and frequent talking head Steven Pinker, along with a one word expression of assent:
“Sad to agree with Cathy Young and Matt Johnson the Free Press (for which I had high hopes) has ‘descended into MAGA-lite.’ Yes, PC-SJW-Critical-Woke-Intersectionality is bad, but some perspective, please: Blowing up the international order, sucking up to autocrats, wrecking the world economy, sowing doubt about vaccines, spreading medical quackery, strangling lifesaving foreign aid, pardoning violent rioters, preventing data collection, spewing nonstop lies, & extorting the press, law firms, and universities is worse,” Seconded.
Okay, Bari’s rag, which she puts out with a great deal of assistance from both wife Nellie Bowles and kid sister Suzy Weiss, is less than perfect, seeing as it heavily features certified in-house geniuses Trump-worshipping Victor Davis Hanson and British Empire worshipping Niall Ferguson, but the secret, more or less, is to skip the guys and stay with the gals, who are generally a lot more fun.
I’ve already noted how Nellie, in her weekly raps about this and that, has taken a less than reverential approach to the Trump administration’s “plan” to revive both American manufacturing and American masculinity and has even snickered at the notion of spending “more” on defense! How girly is that?
And if you think Nellie’s bad—and what “real man” wouldn’t?—how about Sister Suzy’s1 take on The Allure of Hardcore Wealth Porn, all about online chicks bragging about their $5,000 purses, which I frankly found impossible to get through. Even “better”—I guess, because I didn’t have the courage to start it—is this surely juicy takedown of Bill Belichick’s Very, Very Young Girlfriend. I’m sure the pussywhipping of an aging football coach who looks like a man who spent the night burying a corpse and now realizes he’ll have to dig it up again because he left his business card on the body is a topic guaranteed to be just achock with chuckle, but somehow I just didn’t have the stomach for it.
More seriously—a lot more seriously—consider this post, Is Donald Trump Breaking the Law? Seven Experts Weigh In., a team assembled by “the editors” to bring together seven of the “sharpest minds” in the law business to vet Donald Trump’s 100 days of hideous misrule. And they all agree it’s hideous!
The seven takes range from former U.S. appeals court judge Michael McConnell that “It’s Not Too Late for This Administration to Get a Grip”—meaning, in effect, that it’s only taken them 100 days to turn the U.S. legal system into a total shit show—to George Mason University professor Ilya Somin’s “Major Steps Toward Authoritarianism.” Or how about University of Chicago law professor Aziz Huq’s take—“Open, Repeated, and Shameless Violations of the First Amendment”? (Professor Huq’s family very likely comes from India, with a Muslim cultural heritage, but no one on the internet seems to want to tell me that.)
Well, if Bari doesn’t have a problem with that, I sure don’t (and I wouldn’t even if she did have a problem with it), but the larger issue is this: Bari knew what all seven of these “experts” were going to tell her before she asked them. So why did she stack the deck against Trump in such an egregious manner? Couldn’t she find an “expert” that would tell her “No, Trump isn’t breaking the law! He’s enforcing it”? Because there are plenty of ‘em out there, serious non AV fave rave South Texas Law School professor Josh Blackman being a leading example. No, Bari didn’t “find” a Trump supportin’ lawyer because she didn’t want to. She wanted to send a message that Trump is violating the law (a lot!) but she didn’t have the moral courage to say so herself. Nothing wrong with baby steps, folks. Nothing at all.
It’s true that running features devoted entirely to smacking Donald Trump over the head with a two-by-four is not really what The Free Press is about—and there are some subjects—Israel, in particular, of course—about which neither Bari, nor Nellie, nor Suzy have the least sense of humor. And, most egregiously, perhaps, The Free Press just luvs what Bobbie II has done with HHS.2 So, yeah, if you were expecting “The Free Press” to be what Bari, in her famous “quit letter” to the New York Times, expected the Times itself to be, citing the words of New York Times owner Adolf Ochs way back in 1896—“to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion”—that’s not going to happen.
Afterwords
Both the FP and the National Review are gagging on “Air Donald”, Trump’s new toy courtesy the clean hands folks at Qatar, which apparently is not Bari’s favorite Arab Emirate. The FP helpfully provides a run-down on what the National Review should be calling the “Trump Crime Family”.
Go here for Matt Johnson on the FP’s shortcomings, and here for Cathy Young’s appraisal.
1. I’m sorry, but the name alone is offensive. Susan Sontag must be rolling in her grave, in her grave. Susan Sontag must be rolling in her grave.
2. Why not? Almost all of Bobbie’s grotesque appointments have been FP contributors!
