I endorse Kamala Harris for President*

*even if The Washington Post won't.

A day later, I still can't begin to convey my anger and mortification at the news that the Washington Post had a Harris endorsement ready to go that was subsequently killed by the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos, apparently due to concerns that his business arrangements might suffer if a punitive Donald Trump were to win the White House. Or maybe it wasn't fear, maybe it was just greed. Doesn't matter. As a journalist, this to me (and to every other journalist I know) is Defcon-1, the five-alarm fire – exactly the kind of Church abrogation of State that every intern learns is verboten on his or her first day cleaning out the newsroom spittoons. Maybe we were naive to think it wouldn't come to this – or maybe just I was. But here we are.

Coupled with the L.A. Times' similar "anticipatory obedience" – you can call it craven kowtowing – to a potentially coming authoritarian state, as well as the Tribune Company and its owner, Alden Global Capital, preventing the editorial boards at the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel from making political endorsements, it's clear that the oligarchs who own the country's papers of records are not covering themselves in glory.

You know who is? Their employees. The Post's editor-at-large Robert Kagan promptly resigned his post in protest yesterday (as did Mariel Garza, the L.A. Times' editorial page editor, and two of her colleagues), and I am pleased to note that as of late last night on the WaPo website, publisher/CEO William Lewis' mealy-mouthed rationale for withholding the paper's endorsement – some nonsense about "going back to the paper's roots" – is followed by five articles from Post writers and readers telling Bezos and Lewis to heartily go fuck themselves. (Lewis's publisher's note has 35,000 comments and counting, 99% of them blistering with outrage.)

The political cartoon by Ann Telnaes is especially damning:

Opinion  Democracy Dies in Darkness

Ann Telnaes cartoon on The Post not endorsing a presidential candidate.

I never thought I'd see a newsroom staff in open revolt against its paper's owner, but I guess this is here we live now. And of course it means I have to ask myself how I feel about contributing freelance film reviews to the Post, as I have been on a weekly basis since April and ostensibly will until staff film critic Ann Hornaday comes back from book leave next year. Should I quit, too? I'm not going to, nor do I think the newsroom staff should. As far as I'm concerned, that just means the owners win. Do I think you should cancel your Washington Post subscription if you have one? That's up to you, and I certainly understand why you might not want anything to do with a newspaper that has abandoned its duty to the public trust. But I will note that such an action punishes the staff rather than the owner.

Should you cancel your Amazon Prime membership? I did, late last night. It didn't exactly feel like a blow against the Empire. But it didn't feel like nothing, either. I doubt the second-richest man in the world will feel the pinch. (The richest man in the world is currently try to buy the election for Donald Trump and talking things over with his BFF Vlad P, in. case anyone wants to wake Merrick Garland up from his nap.) I also doubt any of these guys feel a flicker of shame; their wealth inoculates them from it. Instead, they outsource that shame to everyone who works for them. Democracy dies in darkness, all right, and the only people keeping the lights on right now are you and me and the reporters and editors who understand why a political endorsement matters and why withholding this one is an act of utter moral cowardice.

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