However, these editorials can perform one valuable service to their readers, which I will address in earnest below.
Iâve always been of the opinion that a newspaperâs one and only job is to thoroughly cover the candidates and issues, inform its readers, and then allow them to make up their minds about what they will do with their vote.
Do that, and youâve successfully done your job as a journalistic institution.
Many of my colleagues in the business disagree with my take, which has made for some robust discussions over the years. Iâll try to throw a blanket over the gist of their reasoning for supporting endorsements that goes something like this: Because readers are busy with their lives, newspapers can do a valuable service of letting them know who they think would best do the job in office. After all, their only job is to cover these candidates 24/7, so who then is a better expert on the subject?
OK ⌠Maybe ⌠But, still, Iâm not too fond of it.
Letâs go with the line that newspapers, and in this case The New York Times, are the real experts on the candidates and the issues in this presidential election.
If that is the case, then the editorial The New York Times published today just demolished its very own news staff by exposing them for catastrophic and democracy-threatening incompetency.
Letâs get started:
Hereâs the slammer the Times put atop their piece touting Harris for president:
THE ONLY PATRIOTIC CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT
OK, youâll get no disagreement from me, so letâs hear more about this âpatriotic choice.â
Well, you had to wait a bit because the Timesâ editorial staff spent the first four graphs excoriating the nightmare Kamala Harris is running against, Donald Trump, for, among other things, âProving himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities â wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, discipline â that he most lacks.â
OK, yep, thatâs the guy Iâve known for the past nine years. But please, go on, NYT ...
âThose disqualifying characteristics are compounded by everything else that limits his ability to fulfill the duties of the president: his many criminal charges, his advancing age, his fundamental lack of interest in policy and his increasingly bizarre cast of associates.â
Incredibly damning. I mean, how is this guy even allowed outside the gates of his garish country club â or even a jail cell? But continue, please âŚ
âThis unequivocal, dispiriting truth â Donald Trump is not fit to be president â should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election.â
So The New York Times took out its flamethrower Monday, and laid waste to the 78-year-old America-attacking felon, before even mentioning Harris once. Seems like The New York Times thought it plenty prudent to lay out the stakes in no uncertain terms the calamitous effect another Trump presidency would have on this country.
After all, he lacks âwisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, and discipline, but besides that, heâs got a lot going for himself.
So letâs duck in here real quick and launch a question aimed at the paperâs news department: Did you bother reading this editorial that rips into this disgusting, America-attacking man and his threat to our democracy?
Do you agree with this editorial?
Assuming your answers are even in the remote vicinity of yes, can you tell us why you have not covered him with the resources, urgency and editorial weight this gigantic new story demands during the past eight years?
Can you lower yourselves to reader-level and offer us at least a brief explanation for WHY you spend more time on your endless, self-serving polling than you do protecting your readers from a two-bit authoritarian thug who means to end us???
Look, as an old print guy, you continue to make me absolutely sick, but at least your editorial staff has now exposed you for failing to cover the biggest story in the United States of America since the Civil War with even a remote amount of adequacy.
Hereâs more from the editorial:
â(This election) is about whether we invite into the highest office in the land a man who has revealed, unmistakably, that he will degrade the values, defy the norms and dismantle the institutions that have made our country strong.
Dismantle the institutions that have made our country strong âŚ
I mean, HOLY HELL, people. How do you think this newspaper would be covering anybody but Trump, if they were telling us they were going to âdismantle the institutions that have made our country strong???â
Can you imagine for one minute the deluge of fire and heat they would bring against Harris if she had her sights set on dismantling OUR institutions? By the time they were done with her, sheâd be carried out on a rail, and sent to Guantanamo Bay for the rest of her life.
Then The New York Times does the most New York Times thing ever and criticizes HARRIS for (prudently) avoiding them and their wreck of a news staff by writing this nuclear-powered bluster:
âMany voters have said they want more details about the vice presidentâs plans, as well as more unscripted encounters in which she explains her vision and policies. They are right to ask. Given the stakes of this election, Ms. Harris may think that she is running a campaign designed to minimize the risks of an unforced error â answering journalistsâ questions and offering greater policy detail could court controversy, after all â under the belief that being the only viable alternative to Mr. Trump may be enough to bring her to victory. That strategy may ultimately prove winning, but itâs a disservice to the American people and to her own record. And leaving the public with a sense that she is being shielded from tough questions, as Mr. Biden has been, could backfire by undermining her core argument that a capable new generation stands ready to take the reins of power.â
âMany votersâ ... Screw off with that, you haughty fools.
How DARE they talk about âa disservice to the American peopleâ when their very own news staff canât find their a-- with both hands, much less identify the biggest story in 160 years.
Of course, she should avoid them and the incompetent boobs on the news desk: THEY ARE DANGEROUS.
This editorial is stuffed with so much unmitigated gall that Iâm shocked it didnât melt the presses when it was being printed. It exposed its very own news staff for incompetency that rises to disturbing levels, including this:
Unless American voters stand up to him, Mr. Trump will have the power to do profound and lasting harm to our democracy.
And there it is. A second Trump term would do âlasting harm to our democracy âŚâ
Youâd think that would be all any half-decent newspaper would cover, especially given that a free press is one of the featured ingredients in any democracy.
Finally â and I am sparing you here because I could go on all day completely leveling this reprehensible paper â The New York Times attempts to out New York Times itself by ending its editorial with this:
âIn 2020 this board made the strongest case it could against the re-election of Mr. Trump. Four years later, many Americans have put his excesses out of their minds. We urge them and those who may look back at that period with nostalgia or feel that their lives are not much better now than they were three years ago to recognize that his first term was a warning and that a second Trump term would be much more damaging and divisive than the first.
âKamala Harris is the only choice.â
Many Americans have put his excesses out of their minds???? Are you serious with this, you pompous idiots? I guarantee you there are tens of millions in this country who have been traumatized by this evil b------, and WISH they could put him out of their minds. But if you want to dig in and assume that is not the case, then let me remind you of this: It is YOUR JOB to remind readers about the dangers of this twisted idiot with your urgent reporting of those âexcesses.â
My-God âŚ
By running this editorial, The New York Times has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that if the news department isnât in the tank for Donald Trump, then they are easily the most overpaid, incompetent nitwits who have ever staffed a newsroom.
Unfortunately, itâs most likely both.
NOW READ: Is this the October Surprise?
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of âToxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trumpâs Very Important Lettersâ and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough)
