:: Life Of Dave ::

Dr Biden

Over the past few days there's been a furor over an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which I think tried to say 'only MDs should call themselves Doctor'. Actually I'm fairly sure it didn't try to say that, because everything in the WSJ opinion section is partisan hackery. But that was one of the bits people were arguing about. Also worth noting was the sexism, racism, and overall yuckiness of the piece. People got mad, because the piece was utter shite, and today the WSJ doubled down, blaming so-called 'cancel culture'. I hadn't caught the first time I saw their doubling down that it was their own colleagues who had complained - "280 of our Wall Street Journal colleagues signed (and someone leaked) a letter to our publisher criticizing the opinion pages". There is a theoretical wall (actually a literal wall too) between opinion and news stories, but nobody can make me believe that a paper that partisan doesn't make decisions based on their political beliefs. In fact, the only reason I would buy any amount of neutrality in WSJ management was because their opinion section benefits from the credibility the news team brings them (one can debate whether this makes the news team complicit).

None of this is new. The WSJ has been on my shit list for decades, and I figure if you give them money you either support their shite views, or have not been paying nearly enough attention.

One argument I have seen put forward recently, which I have been thinking a lot about, is the idea that what I am saying, that the WSJ is trash, always has been, and always will be, so we should ignore their crappy op-eds - is part of the problem. I'm much more sympathetic to this idea post-Trump than I would have been before. I'm not sure where I'm landing on the whole 'call out every single thing every single time no matter what', but I'm pretty sure I've moved closer to it now that I've seen what happens if we just ignore shitty people, assuming that if we don't give them any oxygen they'll just go away. They become president, and take every other position of power, and make the place I live a nightmarescape.

So I've linked the articles. If all publicity is good publicity that's a mistake, but like I said - I'm beginning to think we have to look every single instance in the face and, to that face, say 'this is crap, you're wrong'.

And as for 'cancel culture', it turns out that's also called 'the free market'. The WSJ can continue to publish their tripe. But unless and until they actually manage to install a dictator, rather than just supporting a failed coup d'état, they can't make us buy their crappy little paper.