The Bezos Speaketh

Could this herald happier times for Virginia?

The Washington Post’s editorial chief is out the door and cue the indignation. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/business/media/washington-post-bezos-shipley.html.

Light the exit sign, too. In many quarters of the paper, this will not be received as happy news and may potentially cause departures.

“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” The New York Times reports Mr. Bezos saying. “Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical; it drives creativity, invention and prosperity.”

Heaven knows what that means (you should say such things only when accompanied by music), but a Post opinion page shake-up at least creates the possiblity of being beneficial to Virginia. The editorial hostility that the Post routinely shows toward Virginia – its relentless demands to do this, that or the other thing – would not be missed.

This assumes, of course, that the next occupant of that job – editor of the editorial page – arrives more level-headed, thoughtful and informed about matters below the Potomac.

I could give you many, many examples of the Post’s overbearing ways, but one immediately jumps to mind: Gov. Ralph Northam.

In February, 2019, a photograph from Northam’s medical school yearbook suddenly appeared on the Internet. It was essentially pay-back for Northam’s opinions on abortion, deemed too clinical by someone(s). It was meant to hurt Northam and it did. He reeled from the blow; he did not manage it well.

The Post commentary forces descended on Northam en masse. Columnists. Editorialists. Whatever. There may have been one or two exceptions, but in the main the Post’s opinionated troops were of one mind: Northam had to go.

Remember that moment in Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King?” -- “… old Dan fell, turning round and round and round twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall till he struck the water.”

Poor Daniel.

Poor Ralph.

The photograph is now infamous – two people, one in blackface, the other in a pointy Klan hat, and both very likely blasted, thinking they were being funny – and the situation was not helped when Northam apologized right out of the box.

He was soon backtracking, holding a disastrous press conference, resembling a rube and mumbling nonsense. Northam’s staff was no help to him. Virginia’s First Lady proved heroic. If you need someone to be in a foxhole with you, skip Dr. Northam and reach for his wife Pam. For all intents, she was the one who said, no, the governor is not going to resign.

The photo was 35-years-old. Northam had lived a full, adult life and won broad admiration for its maturity, service and altruism. He healed children. He repaired wounded soldiers. He entered public life and succeeded over and over again. He won elected for governor in 2017 by a wide margin.

The Post said none of that counted for anything.

“GOV. RALPH NORTHAM (D) can no longer effectively serve the people of Virginia who elected him,” the Post editorialized on Feb. 6, 2019. “… the circumstances are decisive; what’s done cannot be undone. He must go.”

“Must.”

Funny thing about editorials. It’s generally deemed wise not to demand outcomes that can be ignored with impunity. Just don’t write stuff – fatuously labeled “Editorial Board” -- that makes you and the paper look stupid.

It’s never the “Editorial Board.” There’s functionally no such thing. More now than ever, there’s a one perturbed person at a keyboard, pounding away, hurtling towards the “send” button. That’s how editorials work. The editorial board only convenes to compare hangovers.

In point of fact, Ralph Northam went nowhere. He completed his full four-year term as governor.

But Northam was never quite the same afterwards. It was a blow delivered, not just by the Post, but by many people who, in the joy of the moment, pampered themselves at Northam’s expense and to the detriment of Virginia.

With the Post – at least within recent years – it never lets up. It reminds me of a friend in France – or her sister, to be precise. The two of them lived together on a farm. My friend said one day, “My sister has a theory of the day and the theory is not good.”

That’s the Post. It has a theory of Virginia and the theory is not good.

There’s plenty to critique down here, I get that. But too many of the orders barked out by the Post fall into the category of ideological self-indulgence.

It wasn’t always so. I’ve read the paper daily for more than 60 years and its journalism has frequently been constructive. But it has been running the other direction in recent years and in ways staggeringly obnoxious. I will take up, in turn, its treatment of Virginia Military Institute and a long list of rural communities.

If today’s news leads to some sort of reckoning, some sort of institutional reevaluation, some recallibration of the Post’s approach to Virginia … well, it’s about time. Like Bezos says, “God bless America.”