Saturday, 23 November 2024

Still Fuming from Harris Endorsement Drama, Washington Post Gives Readers Advice on How to Flee the Country


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Journalists at the Washington Post might be hopelessly out of touch with normal Americans, but they certainly understand what their readers—mentally ill liberals with college degrees—want to know. On Thursday, the Post published an explanatory guide for Americans thinking about leaving the United States after Donald Trump's overwhelming victory in the 2024 election, offering tips on obtaining a visa to live in Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. For some reason, the article did not include tips on how to immigrate to the many African countries where English is the primary language.

The Post examined the "political outlook" and health care systems in those five countries but not the economic outlook, which is just as well because none of those countries compare favorably to the United States. Reporters Leo Sands and Vivian Ho spoke to Jen Barnett, the owner of a company that helps Americans eager to move abroad to escape "political divides" or to find "a new home that's safer for LGBTQ people or raising kids." Barnett said the firm's website traffic exploded last week after the presidential election was called for Trump. (Some context: Deranged liberals have been theatrically pledging to leave the country if a Republican wins the White House since 2004; very few of them actually follow through.)

The article comes as Post journalists continue to express frustration with owner Jeff Bezos's decision to block the editorial board's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. Several employees quit their jobs in protest. (No one whose name you'd recognize.) Opinion columnist Karen Attiah slammed the decision as "an absolute stab in the back" and "an insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line." Attiah's colleague, Jennifer Rubin, did not quit despite encouraging Los Angeles Times journalists to resign after the paper's owner also barred them from endorsing Harris last month. A group of 20 Post opinion writers—only two of whom ultimately resigned—signed a statement denouncing the refusal to endorse Harris as "an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love."

Days after Post publisher Will Lewis announced the endorsement decision on Oct. 25, Bezos further infuriated the journalists on staff by arguing (correctly) in an op-ed that mainstream media outlets should stop behaving like partisan cheerleaders in order to restore their credibility with the American public. Last week, Bezos quickly congratulated Trump on his "extraordinary political comeback" and ended the paper's pandemic-era remote work policy by ordering employees to return to the office five days a week. Semafor reports that Post employees are still griping about the announcement on Slack. "Won't lie, I thought the 'thank you for all your hard work during the election' email would look a little different," one staffer wrote on the messaging app, receiving hundreds of favorable emojis from colleagues expressing agreement.

The Post's content in recent days suggests the paper's employees are still struggling to shake old habits. Rubin, for example, published a shockingly reasonable column on Sunday arguing that journalists and political insiders should "stop obsessing about the election" and go out and talk to the normal Americans "whose lives are unfamiliar to us." The column was published a day after an article from reporters Kim Bellware and Annabelle Timsit headlined, "Women fear Republicans will move to overturn no-fault divorce laws." The article cites Chicago-based divorce attorney and "sought after media contributor" Susan Guthrie, two law school professors, and a TikTok divorce coach.


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