Linked List: January 4, 2025

Saturday, 4 January 2025

Pulitzer-Prize-Winner Ann Telnaes Quits the Washington Post After Editors Nix Cartoon Mocking Bezos (and His Tech/Media Mogul Cohorts) for Paying Fealty to Trump 

Ann Telnaes, from her personal site on Substack (alas):

I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations — and some differences — about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.

The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/OpenAI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner. [...]

As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness”.

The only thing wrong with the cartoon is that she drew it too soon to include Tim Cook. The cartoon isn’t even particularly scathing. I’d describe it as tame even. It shows these moguls as offering money to Trump — which they are! What a bizarre decision by Telnaes’s editors. It’d be like me getting offended if someone drew a cartoon that showed me wasting money betting on the Dallas Cowboys. If the shoe fits you have to wear it.

This isn’t a sign that the Washington Post has taken another turn for the worse. It’s simply proof of what many of us wrote before the election, when Bezos kiboshed the Post editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. In one fell swoop that decision collapsed the entirety of The Washington Post’s editorial integrity. This Telnaes fiasco is just more proof. More will follow until Bezos sells.

Consider Cook as a Tragic Figure 

Marco Arment, on Mastodon, regarding Tim Cook’s million-dollar chip pitched into the pot for the Trump 2025 inauguration racket:

Watch everyone now bend over backward to justify this as some sort of forced move that Cook HAD to do.

Have you considered the possibility that Tim Cook just… supports Trump? Like so many other mega-rich CEOs? Is it that hard to believe?

Why do we think Tim Cook couldn’t possibly support Trump, while all of these other billionaires support him for their own billionaire self-interests?

Why do we keep making excuses for him?

Why do we keep making excuses for Apple?

He clearly didn’t have to do it. And Arment is right, it’s entirely possible he simply supports Trump and signed his check with a smile on his face. But I think it’s a lot more likely that this decision was ruthlessly practical. That whatever Cook’s idealogical/political feelings towards Trump, playing ball on this inauguration racket was simply Cook doing what he deemed best for Apple.