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The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times' civil wars are just the beginning
First went the Los Angeles Times, then the Washington Post. They wouldn’t be making a presidential endorsement this election. The Times’ owner made the decision over the objections of the editorial board. The Post’s publisher delivered the decision, reportedly over the objections of the whole staff.
The brouhaha exposes a lot: first, just how incredibly out of touch these people are; and second, what’s coming if Vice President Kamala Harris loses in eight days.
Reporters and writers are as committed as ever — and willing to leak on their bosses, attack their publications, and resign for their cause.
Let’s start with the self-awareness — a quality notable lacking in American media. And we can begin that with a look at the victims here. Can you imagine, for a moment, those poor people who won’t know how to vote now? Who might not know what the L.A. Times editorial staff thought about former President Donald Trump? I mean, we know one of their number was so traumatized because a Trump-supporting neighbor plowed her driveway for free that she wrote a whole column on her moral conundrum, but that wasn’t explicit enough for us.
Former WaPo executive editor Marty Baron said it best, calling the paper’s decision not to endorse “cowardice” and “a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty.”
The whole thing is preposterous. It’s unlikely that anyone outside the newspaper staffs themselves even noticed the papers hadn’t made their endorsements before they announced they would not be making any. If the last eight years have exposed anything, though, it’s the American media’s incredibly propensity to make it about themselves. When Trump first won, their time spent wondering why their countrymen chose him over Her was fleeting at best. Instead, they switched gears to what they had done wrong and how they had made it all happen. Even their introspection is just thinly disguised self-regard.
Since those heady days, it’s only gotten worse. World War II fantasies play out in their heads, starring them as the romanticized heroes of Le Resistance. They may wear COVID masks instead of balaclavas, and in reality, they might be the team that turns local priests over to the authorities for wrongthink, but in their heads they are fighting Adolf Hitler reincarnate.
The childish fantasies don’t end there, however. These folks think they’re needed. The internal freakouts at the L.A. Times and Washington Post led to public resignations. Raise your hand if you think any publisher wants an unemployed L.A. Times editorial writer who publicly criticized her paper and its publisher. Any takers? Anyone?
Sure, they were the toast of the childless cat ladies at last weekend’s dinner party, but glory is fleeting — vainglory, more so. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin encapsulates the true Democrat appreciation of the sacrifice perfectly: She cheered on the resignations at the L.A. Times, even wondering why there weren’t more. Then, when her own paper followed suit the next day, she stayed put. Even when Washington Post editor at large Robert Kagan left and did his little weekend media tour all about it, she held on to her job. Maybe she’ll resign yet, but chicken hawks rarely change their feathers.
If any of these people had learned a thing these past eight years, it should have been that it is not our role to tell people what to think. Americans don’t like it, and when we decide to ignore that and tell them what to think anyway, they don’t listen. In 2015 we didn’t know that. The American press still believed it enjoyed the prestige and influence it had inherited. In 2024, there’s no excuse for not knowing it.
The first clear sign was National Review, a then-60-year-old magazine that, through the omnipresent efforts of its founder and longtime editor William F. Buckley, Jr., had been the mighty flagship of conservative media, deciding the contours and specifics of who was acceptable and who would be exiled. Buckley’s successors believed they still possessed his authority, and as Trump’s eventual nomination loomed ever more likely, they decided a demonstration of that authority was in order.
The big purple and gold issue “Against Trump” featured a dozen of the top names in conservative media. The authors, publishers, and assorted luminaries may have imagined themselves a glorious cavalry charging the enemy to the cheers of the peasantry. Instead, they were revealed to be modern Don Quixotes: impotent and more than a little silly.
The full might of a once-mighty magazine was concentrated and fired ... and had no effect. The episode served as an object lesson on modern realities to anyone paying attention. Many of the men and women featured on the cover would come to recognize this and learn from it. Few in corporate left-wing media joined them.
While this industry-wide effort was successful in hobbling his first administration, it’s done little to hinder Trump’s long-term success — and much to squander the remaining credibility the press still enjoyed. Even as reporters upped their rhetoric, committing more and more fully to their new roles resisting Trump, his popularity continued to climb. Today, after nearly a decade of virtually universal negative coverage, his approval rating sits as high as it’s ever sat. Still, Democratic journalists remain blind to their limits.
This story of the media’s collapse, however, isn’t over — and last week’s episodes give us a good glimpse of what will come if the 45th president returns to office. Even while owners and publishers are growing sick of their reporters’ and writers’ unending tantrums, the reporters and writers themselves are as committed as ever — and willing to leak on their bosses, attack their publications, and resign for their cause.
If in eight days Donald J. Trump overcomes being impeached, unelected, legally persecuted, relentlessly smeared, nearly assassinated (twice!), and massively outspent to win the 2024 presidential election, there won’t be any introspection in the ranks of Democrat media. There will be civil war.
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The fire rises: The New York Times: In a first among Christians, young men are more religious than young women
Christianity is under threat from within. Decades of “feminized sentimentality” had driven young men away, and study after study shows children are more likely to be religious if their fathers practiced the faith than if the source of religion is their mother. The recognition of this and the work to return to more traditional roots have begun to change things. It’s on display in my home parish, as well as those I visit. It’s on display across the country, too. Ruth Graham reports:
The dynamics at Grace are a dramatic example of an emerging truth: For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.
“We’ve never seen it before,” Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, said of the flip.
Among Generation Z Christians, this dynamic is playing out in a stark way: The men are staying in church, while the women are leaving at a remarkable clip.
... Young men have different concerns. They are less educated than their female peers. In major cities, including New York and Washington, they earn less.
At the same time, they place a higher value on traditional family life. Childless young men are likelier than childless young women to say they want to become parents someday, by a margin of 12 percentage points, according to a survey last year by Pew. The young men at Grace and Hope churches “are looking for leadership, they’re looking for clarity, they’re looking for meaning,” said Bracken Arnhart, a Hope Church pastor.
He added, “There are guys that are just hungry.”
This growing gender divide has the potential to reshape the landscape of not just religion, but also of family life and politics. In a Times/Siena poll of six swing states in August, young men favored former President Donald J. Trump by 13 points, while young women favored Vice President Kamala Harris by 38 points — a 51-point gap far larger than in other generational cohorts.
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