Wanted: MAGA Sycophant for WashPost Opinion Editor
David Shipley does the right thing. Also: My email explaining how I spent last week. Pretty please, Elon, don't fire me!
Better late than never.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered [Washington Post opinion editor] David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100 percent commitment — I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.
—Jeff Bezos, Feb. 26, 2025
David Shipley is well out of there. He ought to have quit last fall, after Bezos killed the Post’s Kamala Harris endorsement, but never mind. David is a talented editor—back during the previous century he assigned me a piece for the New York Times Magazine—and somebody should snatch him up quickly. This will go much harder for the Post. Finding a non-mediocrity to run what Bezos apparently intends to turn, at best, into a faded copy of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and, at worst, into a full-on cheering section for MAGA, will prove difficult. Probably Bezos and his partner in crime Will Lewis think talent takes a back seat to obedience.
Shipley’s greatest accomplishment at the Post was a series of magazine-style pieces profiling star civil servants. Supervised by Michael Lewis, who also contributed the best entry, the profiles will be published next month as a book. You might say Shipley’s series was an early answer to Elon Musk’s “what did you do last week” email to two million federal employees—an answer that Musk doesn’t want to hear. In my latest New Republic piece I advise Musk how I myself spent the previous week. (As Backbencher readers know already, much of it was spent counting MAGA Seig Heils.) You can read my piece here.
I now only read a few pieces in NYT and WaPo from journalists I trust. I'll stay with cheapest subscription they offer (what happens when you cancel for several months) until they leave. My preference is to read, not listen or watch (many podcasts waste a lot of time trying to get heads centered and laughing at jokes). I pay a LOT of money for many excellent sources. Getting read to unsubscribe to manage the volume. I also watch Nicolle, Rachel, Stephanie. Not every day for all of this, but reliable and interesting sources with efficient communication works for now.
Liberally paraphrasing playwright Robert Bolt here in Thomas More’s skewering of (perjurer) Richard Rich at More’s trial before Parliament. “That is a fine chain of office you’re wearing, Richard. May I see it?” From the bench: “Master Rich has been made Opinion Editor of the Washington Post.’ More replies: “Ahh but Richard it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world if he should lose his soul… but for The Post, Richard?