In WaPo's world, everything's dismal, including the loss of a depressing suburban shopping mall.

Look at this array of downer headlines on the front page right now. Even the Iran uprising gets portrayed in a negative light. Click to enlarge:



I'm used to MSM portraying suburban shopping malls as soul-sucking places for boring people who don't know how hopeless they are, but when a shopping mall dies, they don't say, good, these places were always a blight on American small-town life, they bemoan the loss, as if whatever happens in Trump's America must be bad. The challenge is just to figure out how to say why it's bad. Today's story — "First, this town lost its Macy’s. Then Sears. Now, all eyes were on J.C. Penney" — strains to make WaPo readers feel for this town's aching loss. It begins:

HERMITAGE, Pa. — Barbara Cake had made the sale. A man was hovering near the gold bracelets at the J.C. Penney jewelry counter when she said, “Hi, sir, how are you?” Before long, he was swiping his credit card for both a bracelet and a pair of diamond earrings for his wife. But Barbara wasn’t done.

“If she doesn’t like these,” she told the customer, “then tell her you know a lot of ladies who would.”

“I just want my husband to buy me a watch,” she continued. “She should be truly happy with these.”

Barbara ripped the receipt from the register, pointed at the flimsy paper and, in a tone that sounded as if she were revealing a sworn secret, she delivered her favorite line.

“Just wait till you see what you saved.”

There were four days until Christmas, and this customer had decided against shopping online to come to a real store and talk to real people. To Barbara, that meant she had to provide something he couldn’t get from clicking buttons on a computer. Could the Internet assure the customer that he was making the right choice? Could it praise him for being a thoughtful husband? Could it make sure that he was getting the best possible deal?

The internet would not have an in-the-flesh lady named Cake to lure the man into buying bad diamond jewelry for his wife. The internet would not have Cake creepily flirt with the man by telling him he could tell his wife that other women want him. The internet would not bitch about presents it's not getting from its husband. The internet would just show us other things that customers who looked at this thing also looked at and comments by people who bought it telling us what they actually think of it. The internet wouldn't burden us with a "flimsy paper" receipt and lean in and murmur about it.

Oh, but these deplorable people need a mall for human contact. A "hovering" man needs a real-life woman massaging him with sexual innuendo if he is to accomplish what for him is the formidable task of buying a Christmas present for his wife.