The Post

Living in DC

It was mid-January of 1977.  After a fall of campaigning for Jimmy Carter, I went to Washington, DC to celebrate the Presidential Inauguration with friends from the campaign staff.  There was the actual swearing-in on one of the coldest ceremonies in history, the parade (I think I was in a local bar), the inaugural ball with the Charlie Daniels Band and Jimmy and Roselyn dancing on the stage, and fireworks over the Mall watched from a warm apartment in Arlington.  

But I wasn’t there to take a job in the Carter Administration.  The next day I became an actual resident in the District. I moved with three other guys into “double” dorm room at American University.  I got a top bunk. And I was still enrolled at Denison University.  But this second semester I was in the Washington Semester program; an intense study of American politics with students from all over the Nation.  

Washington Life

We did hands-on work:  seminars with Supreme Court Justices  (Justice Rehnquist wore Hush Puppies), and leading members of Congress and executive branch officials.  We also found  internships in politics or government.  I used my personal campaign connections to work as a legislative intern in Congressman Tom Luken’s (D- Cincinnati) office on Capitol Hill.

Living in the District was a very different experience.  In Cincinnati, if you were with a bunch of strangers, you could always strike up a conversation about the Reds or the Bengals. Now here in Columbus, it’s almost mandatory to have a working knowledge of Ohio State Football.  But in Washington, the general “topic of conversation” was government and politics.  You could sit on the bus and bring up the latest controversial bill on the floor of the House, or which foreign policy issue was critical, and even the guys in the back had an opinion.

At the Center

And at the center of all of those discussions was the Washington Post.  It was the “paper of record” for the Federal government. And it was the home of Woodward and Bernstein, the men who brought Nixon’s felonies to light.  Even before that, it was the Post (and the New York Times) who went to the Supreme Court to publish the Pentagon Papers. They revealed a concerted Defense Department plot to lie to the American people about the Vietnam War.  

I went to see All the President’s Men, the Redford and Hoffman movie about Woodward and Bernstein.  After the movie, even I was looking over my shoulder in parking garages, waiting for Deep Throat.   The Post covered government and politics like local sports.  It was mandatory reading on the commute to Capitol Hill.

When I left Washington in the spring, I still was able to get the Post in the Cincinnati Congressional office.  But come fall when I went back to Denison to finish my college education. I had to say goodbye to my daily “fix” of the paper.

It was always a great joy when I went back to Washington, able to wake up to the Washington Post.  And while the New York Times became available for delivery here in Pataskala, it was never the same.  The Times is like a textbook assignment, 15,000 words of every arcane detail.  The Post is like a giant “sports page” of politics and current events;  scores, highlights, and projections for the next “game”.  

The Post Today

Finally, I was able to get the Washington Post  app on my phone.  It’s not the same as getting “ink on my fingers”, but I can get some of the old feel.  So Saturday, it was with great dismay that I read that the “newspaper of record”, the one with a masthead reading, “democracy dies in the darkness”, determined not to endorse a Presidential candidate.  

That was a shock: the Post, as usual, has been out-front in exposing the flaws and failures of Donald Trump.  Later “reporting” on the Post itself revealed that the Editorial Board was prepared to endorse Kamala Harris for President.  It was the owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, who stepped in to stifle his flagship media outlet. 

It would be easy to join with thousands of Americans who cancelled their Post subscriptions.  And I did join the hundreds who wrote scathing letters to the Editor (mine not published so far).  I was specific, calling out the cowardice of Bezos, the second wealthiest man in the world.  Hard to imagine that Bezos is afraid of losing government business, as if a couple of billion dollars in sales might “hurt” a man worth $211 billion.  But there it is.

Fear Itself

I’ve already written about the dangers of Trump authoritarianism (History Lesson).  We can worry about mass deportations, criminal prosecutions, and government restructuring if Trump is elected.  But the less discussed consequence is the aura of fear authoritarians create.  It’s not just the affirmative action Trump might take, but the possibility of that action that causes others not to act.  

We know what intimidation is.  It’s the whispered conversation in the restaurant, afraid of being overheard.  It’s the lack of Harris signs or bumper stickers in rural communities, afraid of property damage.  That’s an authoritarian lesson too:  disagree and face the consequence.  It’s just too bad that Jeff Bezos, with all of his billions, his rockets to space and Amazon fulfillment centers scattered like leaves in the fall all over the nation; is intimidated as well.

I’ve expressed my huge disappointment to the Post, but I’ll keep my subscription.  The newsroom hasn’t been cowed yet.  No matter how the election turns out, there still needs to be some light in the darkness.  I hope that fear of retribution won’t snuff out that flame of truth. It’s already sputtering.