Post

This is exactly why I finally dumped my Wapo subscription. That the newspaper would platform Hugh Hewitt and Marc Thiessen, both patent liars, was a bridge too far. Give me a George Will or Charles Krauthammer anytime; I disagreed with them but they forced me to clarify my own thinking.

The people who directed you have names. Until they are named nothing will change

Looking forward to it!

yay!!!

This feels like something @mmfa.bsky.social would be interested in.

🍿

🎉 GET ‘EM

Well done

Woo!

Rats

Has this been published yet? Where/when can we read it?

Dang

🏆🏆🏆

Hey @gillianbrockell.com, did this piece ever publish? If so, where??? 🙏

☕️

following now id only because i really want to read that story

NICE. Looking forward to the reveal!

Oh shit, congrats.

Ooh!

Oh hell yes

where?

Exactly

Another insightful thread about the biased elite editors and their media owner billionaires: bsky.app/profile/gill...

Didn’t anyone argue back that makes no sense?

That is just plain wrong. Intellectual diversity, my foot!

Diversity for me but not for thee

Only when it means people with dark skin.

"I[i]ntellectual diversity" is right up there with "there are good people on both sides" and "January 6th was not an insurrection".

It certainly reads differently when you say it like that.

Yes, wasn’t originally meant to be aspirational, much less baldly descrptive.

This totally tracks and I love that editors/publishers still speak down to people and act like there’s no way anyone was tipping the scales.

…..and here we are.

So you're saying that MAGA writers at WaPo were DEI hires? 🤔

When I still subscribed to WaPo, I would routinely click on a Thiessen piece just to read the scathing comments. I know, clicks were undoubtedly the win the piece was looking for, but I couldn't help myself.

There’s a reason we call it WaPoo

Well thats completely unethical and immoral 😂

Does one qualify as an "intellectual" if their output cannot be verified with fact checks?

They focus on the diversity but not the intellectual part. You should have a variety of smart, thoughtful opinions, not diversify your opinion page by pairing each smart column with a dumb column or each evidence-based piece with a fully false one.

Why I canceled my WAPO subscription that I’d had for years!

When I was on the citizen's editorial board for out local paper and asked why they syndicated Thiessen and Ann Coulter I was given the same excuse.

Diversity of truth is what they meant. Give truth and lies equal airtime. Absolutely disgusting.

Ok, thank you for clarifying. Makes sense.

Getting to the point where news sources need to be split between reality and MAGA’s Cinematic Universe. Perhaps it could be color coded.

😡😡

which senior editors did this

Fred Hiatt's legacy.

JFC - they needed to publish liars to represent ‘the intellectual’ community?

Much like how newspapers that published Doonesbury also had to publish Mallard “Oops I Forgot To Tell A Joke” Fillmore for the sake of appearing “balanced”…

Most WAPO readers with half a brain already knew that.

So ... publish lies

JFC, and that wasn't a five-alarm fire?

Are you fucking kidding me? Those rightwing douchebags aren’t intellectual

ghouls that care about nothing save their bottom line

My favorite Thiessen trope is the "here's what Trump should say in the SOTU/Convention Speech/Debate" column...and then Trump does the exact opposite and Thiessen praises him for how brilliant he is. Never fails...

Louder.

the soft bigotry of low expectations

seriously, if you don’t toilet train your toddler, he will never learn to stop shitting his diapers. or his big boy pants.

Indeed. The American public is dumb enough already….don’t make them dumber by exclusion of relevant FACTS!!!!

Ah for the good old days

White supremacy is at the bottom of so much of it, and white supremacy is a lie.

😂😂😂 Lying is the new “intellectual” DEI

🏆

But there is no intellectual over there...

*Intellectual diversity* does a lot of lifting here…and to be honest I can’t figure out what it means.

For intellectual highs and ließ, that is?

So you are saying DEI was beneficial to MAGA lol

I think they do the same thing at the NYT with Douthat, Stephens, and Brooks because, man, those guys get a lot of basic history wrong in their columns.

We need to see the opinions of stupid people as much or more than intelligent people. Tyranny of the majority at work.

Sounds like a good reason to just quit.

If you have the right subscriptions and absolutely nothing better to do for the next two or three hours, go back and look at some of the George Will and Charles Krauthammer stuff they published back in the day. The Post used to be a great paper, but that mindset went back decades.

Why is it these jokers are said to be geniuses?

Intellectual diversity implies actual intellect.

How can readers possibly appreciate truth if they're not provided with abundant lies for comparison?

Thiessen is less filling 100% Fact Free Opinion

“Intellectual diversity” is a nice euphemism for “idiotic bullshit”.

This is shameful.

I worked at Salon for 14 years. David Talbot spent the entire time he was in charge—about 10 of those years—earnestly looking for a "smart conservative" columnist. He failed. He kept hiring, then firing, David Horowitz instead. For a while there was an anonymous "Ask a Wingnut" column.

Did maga even know what dei stood for?

FFS

And this in a nutshell is bwhy mainstream media is failing to meet the moment. They are solving for “both sides” instead of truth. One “side” has gone completely off the rails with lies and propaganda Report that, otherwise you’re just enabling the slide into fascism.

Shades of JD Vance at the VP debate when he was fact checked. "“Margaret, the rules were that you weren’t going to fact check:". He didn't try to defend his lie, he complained that some standards of truth were being upheld. And the prevailing "wisdom" was that he "won" that debate. 🤦🏼‍♂️

It requires a massive downgrade in courage, integrity and 3rd grade spelling skilks.

Tracks

This is what happens when billionaires control the media. Another big reason why extreme wealth concentration is bad.

DEI you say

Anyone using “Intellectual” referring to Theissen should probably be checked for a brain tumor

And that's how we got here.

just like how I take a little feces with my dinner for intestinal diversity

"Intellectual diversity" I guess means having a broad range of different levels of intellectual ability.

There is a real human being named Marc Thiessen? I always though he was a bot.

It gives kind of "alternative facts" vibes...🤔

I think it’s hilarious people checked to make sure this is true up until about 2010 and then everyone buried it. I can’t imagine what happened that made people not want to publicize a Conservative journalist admit to being a manipulator who doesn’t care about facts when they’re inconvenient.

The real DEI problem

Lies = “Intellectual Diversity”?

"intellectual diversity" we need stupid writers to balance our smart ones

damn. i waited WAY too long to cancel my wapo subscription.

Why would 'intellectual diversity' require lying? Newspapers should never publish 'Opinions" not based on fact. That's why I cancelled all newspapers.

I’d make a crack about that being like affirmative action, but it really isn’t anything like affirmative action in actual practice!

“intellectual diversity” from MAGA is like saying women can do whatever they want but have to check with them first before they do it.

They clearly meant to say ideological diversity since intellectual diversity would have no applicability to them.

Both sides! The experts AND the other one! when my car breaks down, I take it to the mechanic, sure... but not before I run it by the shaman!

Omg I thought the paper was crazy! Until I saw Marc Thiessen.

“The news” effectively became sports talk radio.

Publishing liars and the factually challenged is just another flavor of DEI. What's truly conservative is conserving facts and the truth. Diversity of opinion should never require printing lies and half-baked analysis. The same problem is rife at the Wall Street Journal: substack.com/@ericbutterf...

that's an oxymoron

A judicious balance of reality and bullshit.

😱😱😱

Facts as commodities for sale

Having ‘MAGA’ and ‘intellectual’ in a sentence is only appropriate if the two words are separated by ‘certainly aren’t but cringingly strive to appear’

Thiessen was a major reason I cancelled my longtime subscription to WaPo. And, I was a poli sci major (Grinnell undergrad), taught by my profs that WaPo had been one of the world's most respected newspapers.