Shamefully silly to publish such utter nonsense even at the best of times - a complete disaster doing it in the current situation in which a paper that has adopted “Democracy dies in darkness” as its official slogan should have other things to alert and inform the public about.

Some thoughts: 1/

The mainstream media is not coming to the rescue of American democracy. The struggle against the authoritarian threat resulting from the anti-democratic radicalization of the Right will have to be won in spite of a media environment that continuously incentivizes such nonsense. 2/

A serious person wouldn’t even think about writing such a piece. A serious editor would send it back to the columnist. A paper seriously concerned about informing the public and confronting the audience with substantive perspectives wouldn’t platform it. Yet here we are. 3/

What are the incentives to write / publish this? Clicks, obviously - outrage sells. And there is more: “Civility” scolding always appeals to elites as a way to discipline “the mob” and discredit those, like Fetterman, who are dangerously aligned with those dirty masses. 4/

Finally, this is also part of the overall quest for “balanced” coverage the mainstream media’s “neutrality” dogma produces: “We’ve been plenty critical of those Republicans – better demonstrate how neutral we are by really going hard after this Fetterman thing!” 5/

The accelerating anti-democratic radicalization of the Right in general and the Republican Party in particular presents a tricky problem for political journalists / media outlets who are following an ethos of “neutrality” – understood as equidistance from either side – over all else. 6/

Empirically speaking, there is no equivalent on the Left to the Right’s increasingly open embrace of authoritarianism, nothing the Democratic Party is doing equals the Court’s and the GOP’s commitment to impose the will of a radicalizing reactionary minority on the country. 7/

But if mainstream outlets were to cover, assess, and interpret this situation as objectively, accurately, and adequately as possible (which they should!), they would be criticized as “partisan” – there it is, that typical liberal media bias! – and risk losing credibility and access. 8/

The “solution” is to create “balance” by, on the reporting side, dedicating a lot of resources to covering left-wing threats – the supposed spread of “trans ideology,” perhaps; and on the opinion side, by platforming utterly disingenuous nonsense like this column. 9/

“Neutrality” is achieved by “balancing” the criticism of the Right with a completely disproportionate focus on whatever “issue” might be plaguing the Democrats (Biden so old! Hillary’s emails!) – and so we get this distorted discourse around the way Fetterman dresses. 10/

The WaPo gets more than just clicks out of this: It has successfully played by the rules of neutrality-theater journalism, which prizes being “above the fray” and performing “civil” discourse from a position of nonpartisanship above all else - including accuracy and honesty. 11/

We’ve been having this exact debate for many years. At this point, we are looking at a complete inability and/or unwillingness to “learn” - because financial incentives, ideological preferences, and the dogmas of neutrality-theater journalism all point in the same direction. /end