DYLAN GETS ME OFF THE LAUNCHPAD

Some inspiration from our slyest lyricist, with a pivot to the latest journalistic malpractice

In this wintry season of Dylan, I knew instinctively that our slyest lyricist would help me launch this Substack. Like other Boomers, I trekked to A Complete Unknown (10 a.m. show on day one!), and followed up by streaming No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s three-hour doc. But all the tunes therein were ‘60s Dylan, whereas I’m also a fan of late-stage Dylan - most notably Things Have Changed, the 2000 Oscar-winner for Best Song. That’s where I’ve found the words to get this new venture off the ground:

People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

Thank you, Bob. I’ve spent most of my 50 years in journalism covering national politics (my first foray was in 1976, riding in a car all over Connecticut with Democratic presidential candidate Fred Harris), but now, with the second ascension of our benighted nation’s village idiot, I lack the mental wherewithal to work that turf any longer. If you, the reader, have stumbled upon me today for the first time, I detailed my reasons last month in a farewell political column.

Is there really anything new to say? For instance, the autocrat-elect’s lust for Greenland isn’t new; he was drooling for that Danish fief five years ago, and I weighed in then (“It takes a stable genius to wreak havoc with Denmark, of all places — a faithful NATO ally that has fought with us in Afghanistan. Heck, it’s even filled with blond white people”). I used to care about his hourly imbecilities, but things have changed. For the sake of sanity, I’ve elected to put myself out of range and expand my writerly repertoire. As for politics - or what passes for politics in MAGA 2.0 - I yield again to Bob’s Oscar ditty:

Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much

My primary interest - my main theme in this new format - is to explore how we 75 million who voted against dystopia can best navigate the long years ahead. Yes, for sustenance we have our families. Yes, we have our leisure pursuits. Yes, we have our music (though this week I mourn the passing of Peter Yarrow). Yes, we have our jock heroes (though this week I mourn the passing of Bob Veale, a bespectacled ‘60s Pirates pitcher who had to wipe them with a hanky when the humidity was high). And yes, we have the streaming services that deliver us virtually every show or movie ever made (though we often can’t figure out how to cancel subscriptions). But it would also be nice if we could cling by our fingernails to some durable institutional pillars that can shelter us from the storm.

Speaking of pillars: I never imagined that The Washington Post would wobble like a bike with leaky tires. Why should I keep my digital subscription when it’s too timid to even run a truth-telling cartoon, when it’s making a mockery of its historic mission, when it’s preemptively surrendering to thugocracy?

The paper had a tight connection to my heart. I was a college kid in Washington during the heyday of Woodward-Bernstein. Ben Bradlee didn’t give a shit that Nixon’s AG wanted to put Katharine Graham’s “tit in the wringer,” and that was how the universe worked because the press spoke truth to power. But now that era is as archaic as the videocassette. The Internet has destroyed print journalism’s business model; since 2005, more than 3000 newspapers have closed. Many more have been kept alive but bled dry by hedge funds and other predators. Some have been blessedly sustained by non-profits (including my former paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer), and a few - like The Post - have been arguably rescued by billionaires. Arguably.

Marty Baron, the legendary Post editor who retired in 2021, writes that Jeff Bezos “never interfered in The Post’s journalism during my seven-plus years under his ownership.” Indeed, he writes that Bezos “relished the challenge” of invigorating the paper. But given what’s happened lately, some passages in Baron’s 2023 memoir are painful to read: “(E)verything I’ve heard and seen tells me that Bezos honestly believes in an essential role for journalism in a democracy.”

That all seemed true - until his business instincts kicked in, until he sensed a shift in the political climate and decided that some of his riches might be at risk. He didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blew.

Strike one was when he put his thumb on the scale last fall and importuned the editorial board not to endorse Kamala Harris, who was the obvious choice given the paper’s pro-democracy mission. (Bezos in 2016 had endorsed The Post’s new slogan Democracy Dies in Darkness - telling the staff, according to Baron, that “We don’t have to be afraid of the ‘democracy’ word,” because it’s “the thing that makes The Post unique.”)

Strike two was last week, when the cowed editorial page editor killed Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes’ draft sketch of various media oligarchs - including Bezos - groveling at the convicted criminal’s feet. The editor, David Shipley, clearly mindful that Bezos was busy bending the knee (dining with Musk at Mar a Lago, etcetera), is lamely claiming that because a few columns had addressed the oligarch issue, a cartoon would therefore have been “repetition.” Nobody buys that bullshit, least of all Telnaes, who summarily quit.

A plethora of MAGA disinformation outlets have become cozy zones for the fact-averse, so the very least we should hope for, from places like The Post, is a little backbone. How am I supposed to respond when they commit seppuku over a cartoon? Do I cancel my subscription? I stuck with the paper last fall, during the editorial debacle, because I wanted to support the work of top political reporters like Ashley Parker. But last week I learned that two political reporters have bailed to join The Atlantic. One of them is Ashley Parker.

I’ll keep wrestling with the subscription issue - again, how are we to navigate this wretched era? - for the foreseeable future. This is why I welcome escapes and distractions; I suspect you do too. I’m busy planning bucket-list travel. I’m digging the new book by Irish novelist John Banville. I’m watching my granddaughter’s gymnastic videos. I’m listening to bootlegs of the Grateful Dead (30 spacey minutes of Dark Star!). I’m booked to see The Brutalist in a theater, three and a half hours without the closed captions that an old guy needs. I’m re-upping The Wire, all five seasons with captions, and that should eat up lots of time. I’m readying my new Penn journalism course for students with attention spans beyond TikTok. Heck, I might even watch the playoff-bound Philly Eagles, even though the last time I truly cared about football was 60 years ago when the Giants were quarterbacked by bald dude Y. A. Tittle. Or I could just spend the next four years deleting worthless emails.

But I’ll keep posting in this space, now that I’ve got the hang of it. There’s a rhythm to a writer’s life, and pithy Bob sang it best back in his youth:

Get sick, get well,
Hang around a ink well