“Alec MacGillis, staff writer of the Washington Post, needs to leave journalism immediately to find a profession in which he is half-competent.”
— Brad DeLong, March 27, 2008
Alec MacGillis is a douchebag who has lately been busy carrying “phony scandals” water for the Obama administration. As was once said of Sidney Blumenthal, if MacGillis were hired by the White House tomorrow, his first assignment would be to collect his back pay.
None of that distinguishes MacGillis from dozens of others of partisan Democrat hacks, who seem to think doing steno work for Media Matters and the DNC is courageous and innovative journalism. What sets Alec MacGillis apart is his lack of self-awareness, his evident belief that nobody is ever going to notice what a pompous fraud he really is.
MacGillis is a former Washington Post reporter who is now employed by The New Republic, a magazine that was sold last year to Facebook gazillionaire Chris Hughes, so you might think MacGillis would have a clue about which way the media winds are blowing. Sadly, no:
Craigslist’s Craig Newmark has not bought the Post, thank goodness — that would be too much to bear. But Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as the white knight provokes only slightly less shock and dolor. We knew the other guys had won a long time ago . . .
(“The other guys” = the ones who make profits.)
. . . but it’s another thing when they can waltz in and, in the charmless guise of “Explore Holdings LLC,” drop $250 million in cash for a legendary paper (that’s a mere one percent of Bezos’s net worth), as flip and easy as plucking an Apollo rocket engine from the ocean or building a $42 million, 10,000-year clock in West Texas.
(But what about Chris Hughes waltzing in, huh?)
There are already hopeful noises coming out of the corner of 15th and L about Bezos as owner, compared with other possibilities. He is promising independence. He is, for now, keeping the leadership team in place (let’s hope in particular that he keeps editor Marty Baron, under whose leadership the paper has been doing some notably hard-edged and influential journalism). His politics are not visibly objectionable. . . .
(Please tell us, Mr. MacGillis, what sort of politics are “visibly objectionable” to a professional journalist like yourself?)
But let’s not kid ourselves here: The company that made him one of the richest men in the world has had a less than benign impact on our nation. It has devastated the publishing industry, from the big presses to the small booksellers. It has exacerbated the growth of the low-wage economy, to the point where the president feels the need to celebrate an increase in warehouse jobs that will pay barely more than minimum wage. . . .
(Hey, f–k you, Alec. What I consider “less than benign” is not that Amazon warehouse workers are paid so little, but rather that you are paid so much, you worthless dishonest hack.)
More generally, Amazon has embodied, more than any other of the giants that rule our new landscape, the faster-cheaper-further mindset that scratches away daily at our communal fabric: Why bother running down to the store around the block if you can buy it with a click? No risk of running into someone on the way and actually having to talk to them, and hey, can you beat that price? No thought given to the externalities that make that price possible –the workers being violently shocked every time they pull a book off the warehouse shelf, or losing a chunk of their lunch break to go through the security checkpoint set up by their oh-so-trusting employer. They’re Somewhere Else, working for a company that is Out There, in the cloud. . . .
(Shop now for big savings at Amazon!)
I avoid buying from Amazon as best I can, but I’ll keep subscribing to my old paper as long as they keep printing it . . .
And so much for your influence, you hacktastic douchebag. Nobody really likes you, and this is not their fault, Alec MacGillis.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
