The Establishments war on Donald Trump
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Title: "Why the Outrage Over the Cuts at the Washington Post Is So Annoying"
Source:
National Review
URL Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/corn ... ashington-post-is-so-annoying/
Published: Feb 6, 2026
Author: Charles C. W. Cooke
Post Date: 2026-02-06 10:38:55 by Mudboy Slim
Keywords: None
Views: 8
I have been trying to put my finger on exactly why I have found the outrage over the cuts at the Washington Post so annoying, and in searching for that answer, I have instead found a whole fist. So here goes: The outrage over the cuts at the Washington Post is annoying because the gap between the self-regard of those who were fired and the contributions of those who were fired is so enormous as to beggar belief. On days such as yesterday, Twitter is filled to the brim with “I was just laid off” posts, as though one had stumbled upon a battlefield strewn with the wounded — except, unlike on a battlefield, the wounded are all talking to one another in cloying, self-congratulatory tones. The result is a veritable web of grotesque and sycophantic encomia that does not stand up to even the slightest evaluation. Don’t believe me? Click through on one of those posts, scroll past the pinned advertisement for the newspaper’s union, and look up the user’s name in the Post’s archive. If you do, you’ll typically learn that the person who is being praised as a “brilliant” and “talented” journalist who did “great work” has a job description like “sits at the intersection of civil rights and cooking,” that they wrote four things in the last two months, and that two of them were about how alligators are racist. This — not the second coming of Shakespeare — is what Jeff Bezos was supposed to pay for in perpetuity as penance for having been a useful member of society. Today, a bunch of whiners are demanding that Americans cancel their Amazon Prime subscriptions and subscribe to the Washington Post instead. But why, exactly, would they do that? If Amazon went away, most people’s lives would be worse. If Andrea Cluney-Funey, of the Immutable Characteristics newsletter, were to go away, most people either wouldn’t notice or, in some cases, they would actually be better off for the change. What was lost yesterday was not America’s soul but yet another division of the mediocre worker bees who staff the sprawling progressive blob that we mistake for our national institutions. We can afford that as a country — and at a rate greater than 30 percent, too. And before, in a fit of anger, you write to me to tell me that I’m not important either, please understand that I wholeheartedly agree. I’m not. I’m just a guy. I like doing what I do, but if I were hit by a train tomorrow, the wider world would go on quite happily without me and my writing. I’m not indispensable. I’m not synonymous with the American Republic. And I’m certainly not entitled to the largesse of others if, for whatever reason, they don’t wish to hand it over to me. A whole bunch of journalists have reacted to the changes at the Post by insisting that American democracy is now destined to “die in darkness,” or that “authoritarianism” is ineluctably on the way, or that the incident represents an Important Moment in American History — as if, last night in Omaha, Happy Hour at Jim’s Bar was ruined by a parade of shellshocked office workers asking each other, “Did you hear about Bob Hale from the Climate section?” But, of course, this is all immeasurably stupid and self-serving and, as with most of the ideas that are collectively entertained by our press corps, it ought not to be taken seriously by anyone.
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