Postcard from Jamaica; Readers Chime in on Sullivan & Cromwell's Embrace of Trump, Media's Wimpiness + More!
I just got back from a short vacay in Jamaica. It was a last minute trip, spurred by the miserable, cold New York winter and the no-end-in-sight trauma induced by the new Trump administration. I successfully got away from the cold but not Trump, as I have the bad habit of checking the news every few hours. (Damn internet!)
I stayed at the lovely Half Moon Resort (no, I’m not getting anything for that mention), where I woke up every morning to a pristine beach framed by the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. In the evening, I gazed at that same mesmerizing stretch of sand and water but this time with a rum punch in hand while listening to calypso or reggae. It was all so dreamy and calming that I almost started to believe the lyrics, “Don't worry 'bout a thing, 'Cause every little thing gonna be all right." from the Bob Marley song.
Alas, I have returned to the harsh reality of slushy Manhattan and life in these Not-So-United-States-of-America. Here’s what’s catching my eye as I adjust back.
Readers’ reaction: I got a huge response to my post, ”Sullivan & Cromwell Goes MAGA.” The vast majority of readers shared my chagrin that this prestigious law firm is now at the beck and call of our Dear Leader. A few readers commented that S&C has come full circle in serving a morally reprehensible client, noting the firm’s role in facilitating the arms buildup for Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Of course, some readers took issue with my critical view of S&C in this matter. One suggested that my problem is that I don’t fully appreciate the fruits of capitalism:
If the New York Times paid you $1200.00 per hour for research and writing regardless of any whatsoever behavior you engaged in the past, would you say no [?] Everyone is entitled to a defense in the adversarial system of law, and this is the best system we have. If, your [sic] uncomfortable with the American system, try communism!
I didn’t totally disagree with this guy until he wrote: “Report like Bill O’Reilly does and you can call yourself a journalist!”
Bill O’Reilly as a paragon of journalistic excellence? Gee, I must have missed that seminar. But rest assured I’m as capitalistic as the next guy. If the New York Times, the Free Press or Breitbart News, for that matter, wants to pay me $1,200 per hour, I’m for sale! But until that day comes, I’ll stick with writing what I consider the unvarnished truth.
Several readers also called me “brave” for taking on a big, powerful firm like S&C. “Thank you for being courageous to speak the truth about greed, power and corruption,” wrote a reader.
I am heartened by these words but was I being “brave” by writing about S&C’s role in the legitimization of an election denier? If so, that’s a bit worrisome. It either means that the media has lost its critical edge or that I’m engaging in risky behavior. It shouldn’t be considered an act of courage to tell it like it is.
Paul Krugman’s real reason for quitting the New York Times. Speaking of the sorry state of journalism, Nobel-Prize winning economist Krugman has a lot to say about the frustrations of being an opinion writer for mainstream media. Of particular interest to me is what he said about the sudden change in editorial policy in which his columns went from being edited with a “light touch to extremely intrusive.”
I went from one level of editing to three, with an immediate editor and his superior both weighing in on the column, and sometimes doing substantial rewrites before it went to copy. These rewrites almost invariably involved toning down, introducing unnecessary qualifiers, and, as I saw it, false equivalence … I began to feel that I was putting more effort—especially emotional energy—into fixing editorial damage than I was into writing the original articles. And the end result of the back and forth often felt flat and colorless.
I’ve been there. It’s exhausting and debilitating. I suspect what he lost was a sense of ownership, which, if you’re in the business of putting your personal views out to the world, is akin to having your identity stripped. “I felt that my byline was being used to create a storyline that was no longer mine,” writes Krugman. “So I left.”
Krugman calls all this “a push toward blandness, toward avoiding saying anything too directly in a way that might get some people (particularly on the right) riled up.” He also asks a question I’ve asked myself in similar situations: “If those are the ground rules, why even bother having an opinion section?”
It’s a sad commentary on the state of commentary. But I believe the media has been blanding down for a while. First, there was the P.C. police who demanded words be as insipid as possible, lest they offend one group or another. Now, there’s the wrath of the fearsome Trumpsters who will sue, threaten or otherwise hunt you down like an animal for any perceived slight. The result is that mainstream media is increasingly practicing self-censorship and tamping down on words with bite. It’s pathetic – and the reason a platform like Substack is now filled with refugees from traditional media.
Charles Blow just quit the Times too. He’s leaving to become the inaugural Langston Hughes fellow at Harvard University but is that the whole story? I thought his departing column was curious. He talks (quite poignantly) about his evolution from a graphics designer into an opinion writer. He writes he was the “sole Black columnist, and columnist of color, for most of the Obama era, the rise of the movement for Black lives and the first election of Donald Trump,” which he pointedly adds, “I considered a racial event.” Yet, he says little in the way of praise for The Times or his editors; it was a strangely detached farewell to an institution that greatly transformed the trajectory of his life and career. While he will no longer write for the Times, he will keep his position as an MSNBC analyst, which makes me wonder about the circumstances of his departure. Is he another voice that the newspaper finds too bold for these timorous times?
Meta Me: It’s very meta for an opinion writer (moi) to comment about another opinion writer (Carlos Lozada) who’s opining about opinion writing. But bear with me.
“Whenever someone agrees wholeheartedly with something I write, I die a little inside,” Lozada writes in the Times. And what gets his goat are readers who profess 100% agreement with his views: “If you react to something I’ve said or written with “100 percent” — in written, oral or emoji form — all you’re telling me is that I probably did not persuade you of anything . . . that I’ve accomplished nothing but scratch your ideological itches, confirm your convictions, pinpoint your intellectual erogenous zones.”
Ideally, readers should agree with the reader only 73% of the time, writes Lozada, because, that’s the percentage of Americans who say finance is their top reason for stress, favor term or age limits on Supreme Court justices, and believe in heaven. (Really, 73% believe in heaven? Lordy.)
Oh, how brittle and insecure we opinion writers are! On one hand, we need positive reinforcement to continue this solipsistic ritual, to fan the notion that one’s peculiar take on the world matters. But if readers nod their heads in uniformed agreement, heaping praise on every word we write (not that I have that problem), what’s the point? We start feeling useless and uninteresting.
Show and Tell. All my rantings about the state of journalism might be too inside baseball for you. So let’s end with some pretty pictures from my vacation:
Keep telling yourself: Every little thing gonna be all right.
Vivia