{"id":37422,"date":"2024-11-02T13:17:50","date_gmt":"2024-11-02T20:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=37422"},"modified":"2024-11-02T13:17:50","modified_gmt":"2024-11-02T20:17:50","slug":"f-k-the-billionaire-asshole-owners-of-wapo-and-the-la-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/11\/02\/f-k-the-billionaire-asshole-owners-of-wapo-and-the-la-times\/","title":{"rendered":"F\u2014k the billionaire asshole owners of WaPo and the LA Times!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We don’t need newspaper endorsements when Trump is losing this thing all on his own, writes SFGATE’s Drew Magary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, laughs as he speaks during the Economic Club of Washington\u2019s Milestone Celebration event in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13, 2018. SAUL LOEB\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Drew Magary<\/a>, Columnist Oct 31, 2024 (SFGate.com)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d like to tell you that history will remember the week when the proprietors of both the\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a>\u00a0quashed respective endorsements of Kamala Harris for president, but history has a nasty habit of leaving out the fine print. A 2050 history textbook, especially one in Texas, won\u2019t tell you that WaPo owner and Amazon e-lord Jeff Bezos opted to sit out endorsing any presidential candidate in 2024, and then had the predictable billionaire gall to say that it was because\u00a0Americans don\u2019t trust the media<\/a>. It won\u2019t tell you that pharma baron Patrick Soon-Shiong, who\u00a0once lobbied Donald Trump for a cabinet position<\/a>, yanked his LA Times out of the presidential endorsement biz for vaguely stated reasons that did not explicitly say \u201cMONEY\u201d but should have. It won\u2019t tell you about the journalistic cowardice that these men engineered specifically to avoid Trump f\u2014king with their money should he win on Tuesday. We\u2019ll have to tell that story to ourselves in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because while Trump\u2019s 2016 election victory symbolized how much online discourse, much of it drenched in lies, shaped the prevailing attitude of the general electorate at the time, 2024 stands to embody the opposite dynamic. Canny voters are no longer using the erstwhile Twitter as a primary news source. In fact, they\u2019re not using Twitter at all, and they know which news outlets<\/a> they can rely on to tell it straight and which ones are officially washed<\/a>. Voters under 60 aren\u2019t getting their information from Facebook, and many young voters never even bothered to create an account there to begin with. And no one is swayed by Gannett newspapers, USA Today foremost among them, declining to endorse<\/a>, because every Gannett website is malware without boob shots. The first suggested question when you Google \u201cGannett newspapers\u201d is \u201cHow do I cancel my Gannett newspaper subscription online?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bezos was correct in saying that Americans don\u2019t trust the media, but it goes further than that. Thanks to feckless profiteers like himself, Americans don\u2019t really trust anyone. I know I don\u2019t. I\u2019ve learned not to take polling data from strangers. I\u2019ve learned that all of the publications sitting out this election are run by, no surprise, men … men who can afford to safely arrange an abortion whenever they\u2019re in a bind. And I\u2019ve learned that Donald Trump, probably dancing around on a stage to \u201cMemory\u201d somewhere right now, no longer knows how to talk to anyone save for the invisible goblins living inside his brainpan:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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https:\/\/x.com\/KamalaHQ\/status\/1851686511575433621?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1851686511575433621%7Ctwgr%5Ee35f2a05340d7dec60b5bc42768dbb65be3b0727%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfgate.com%2Fpolitics%2Farticle%2Fbillionaire-owners-wapo-la-times-19877875.php<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the sight of a snake eating its own tail. The legacy publications that are choosing to remain conspicuously silent in this moment are, by extension, writing themselves OUT of that moment. They\u2019ve declared themselves willing to fall for anything, and the result has been a sudden plunge in subscription rates<\/a> that has reduced their influence dramatically. You and I must be the heralds now. We watch the game<\/a> with our own eyes and tell ourselves, honestly, what we see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is, against all odds, a positive development. Because Bezos and the like have barged in and snuffed out the judgment of their own editorial departments, they\u2019ve handed those judgment powers back to the citizenry: We The People, Me The Person. I can see it. I see the hundreds of thousands of people \u2014 perhaps the same people who canceled their WaPo subs \u2014\u00a0flocking to<\/a>\u00a0Harris rallies<\/a>\u00a0while Trump plays to a\u00a0half-empty<\/a>\u00a0ballroom. I see Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, yoinking ideals long owned by the GOP (patriotism, freedom,\u00a0football<\/a>) and weaving them into their stump speeches with a deftness that Clintonite Democrats lacked. I see the women in my life leaving nothing to chance after their first opportunity to elect a woman president cruelly slipped through their fingers eight years ago. I see Harris getting more public endorsements from prominent Republicans than the current standard-bearer of the GOP is. All Trump has behind him right now are JD\u00a0Vance,\u00a0our dimmest Bosa<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Elon Musk<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why I see a shaken Trump preemptively disputing voting results<\/a> in Pennsylvania when the election is still a week away. This is why I see the big fella trying to steal credit<\/a> for capping insulin costs when even our worst informed citizens know that Joe Biden was the guy responsible for it. I see Vance getting wrecked by Joe Rogan<\/em><\/a>. Joe Rogan! I see all of that, I know which way the vibes are flowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Most importantly, I can see a ballot that my home state sent me in the mail, and I\u2019m reminded that I, as a voter in a blue state, DO have power. I DO have agency. I DO matter. I hold the pen. I write the history, as do you. Not Bezos, not Soon-Shiong, not one of the Nates, not\u00a0a f\u2014king needle<\/a>, not the Electoral College, not a bunch of yahoo Trump judges, not a political media that insists every general election will come down to six people living in some anonymous Pennsylvania town, and not a half-assed patchwork of Stop the Steal losers that we can all see coming from miles away. None of them matter. I can see that as clear as day right now. Elections do not happen to you and me. We MAKE\u00a0<\/em>them happen, and the only endorsement that matters now is our own. We\u2019re the ones who can finish off Trump for good next week, so let\u2019s get to it. Let\u2019s\u00a0kick his sorry ass<\/a>, and end this once and for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oct 31, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drew Magary<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COLUMNIST<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drew Magary is a columnist for SFGATE and a co-founder of Defector. His new book, “The Night the Lights Went Out,” is available right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We don’t need newspaper endorsements when Trump is losing this thing all on his own, writes SFGATE’s Drew Magary Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, laughs as he speaks during the Economic Club of Washington\u2019s Milestone Celebration event in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13, 2018. SAUL LOEB\/AFP via Getty Images… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37424,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37422\/revisions\/37424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}