"Los Angeles and California surely need a daily dose of The Post as an antidote to the jaundiced, jaded journalism that has sadly proliferated."

"We are at a pivotal moment for the city and the state, and there is no doubt that The Post will play a crucial role in engaging and enlightening readers, who are starved of serious reporting and puckish wit."

Said Robert Thomson, CEO of The Post’s owner News Corp, quoted in "Start the presses! New York Post will expand to LA with launch of The California Post" (NY Post).

I like the illustration, featuring the Post's best claim to fame, Alexander Hamilton:

Is the NY Post just missing the humor?

I'm reading "Gen Zers insist on wearing sexy clubbing outfits to the office: ‘Like who’s going to stop me?’"

In a recent TikTok video, Dani Klarić, a young interior decorator/creative director, gleefully shared her workday outfit: a white miniskirt, a short-sleeve shirt worn totally unbuttoned to reveal a lacy yellow bra and a pair of sheer yellow thigh-high socks. "If I had a corporate job this is how I would go dressed to work," the TikToker says confidently in the post, which has garnered more than 200,000 likes. "Like who’s going to stop me?"

Key word: "If." She has a job: It's making TikToks that get likes. And the Post is scampering to show — what? — that it can keep up with what's in social media? But it can't! And it even said the word that exemplifies dull, trudging Jebbishness: "garner."

Now, to be fair, this article does quote somebody at Rent the Runway who has such a cool name that I almost feel like believing her: Suzanne Smallshaw:

"If the article shows your home or apartment, says what city you’re in and you don’t like it, you can complain to Facebook. Facebook will then ensure..."

"... that nobody can share the article on its giant platform and, as a bonus, block you from sending it to anyone in Facebook Messenger. I learned this rule from a cheerfully intense senior Facebook lawyer... who... was trying to explain why the service had expunged a meanspirited New York Post article about a Black Lives Matter activist’s real estate purchases.... The policy sounds crazy because it could apply to dozens, if not hundreds, of news articles every day — indeed, to a staple of reporting for generations that has included Michael Bloomberg’s expansion of his townhouse in 2009 and the comings and goings of the Hamptons elites. Alex Rodriguez doesn’t like a story that includes a photo of him and his former fiancée, Jennifer Lopez, smiling in front of his house? Delete it. Donald Trump is annoyed about a story that includes a photo of him outside his suite at Mar-a-Lago? Gone."

Writes Ben Smith in "Is an Activist’s Pricey House News? Facebook Alone Decides. The New York Post has complained that Facebook is blocking and downplaying its stories. But the platform doesn’t pay any special deference to journalists" (NYT).

Smith is surprised that the journalists don't get special treatment on Facebook. The rules are the rules, and they apply to NY Post and NYT reporters just as much as they apply to a random private citizen. A good way to build respect for a system of rules is to have no exceptions — to make them neutral and generally applicable. That's something everyone instinctively understands... at least before they get distracted into thinking about how they or somebody they like really is special and deserves privilege.

Here's Smith:

A decision by The Post, or The New York Times, that someone’s personal wealth is newsworthy carries no weight in the company’s opaque enforcement mechanisms. Nor, Facebook’s lawyer said, does a more nebulous and reasonable human judgment that the country has felt on edge for the last year and that a Black activist’s concern for her own safety was justified.... The point of Facebook’s bureaucracy is to replace human judgment with a kind of strict corporate law....

Corporate! I think the big concept that rules are rules — no exceptions! — extends way beyond the corporate setting. Smith complains that Facebook is using "its own, made-up rules rather than exercising any form of actual judgment." 

The judgment is in making a rule that you are willing to apply across the board. That's the test of a good rule! This is basic ethics. Yes, you get a "made-up rule," but you've made it up using sound ethics!

No wonder the Facebook lawyer was "cheerfully intense"! She understood exactly why her interpretation was admirable. I'd have been cheerfully intense explaining that too. I'm feeling cheerfully intense just writing this!

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

Glenn Reynolds says he's quit writing a column for USA Today.

He doesn't give the details, only directs us to a new column at the NY Post and says:

The left is again showing that it can’t stand anyone who disagrees. “Moral superiority is an addictive drug, and perhaps the most unfortunate legacy of the Civil Rights era is that it got people on the left dependent on moral superiority for their self-esteem.”

Are we supposed to read that as a statement why he's quit USA Today?  The indented material above is all from the NY Post column, which isn't about leaving USA Today, of course. I'm just saying that, as it appears at Instapundit, with the news that he's quitting USA Today, it reads like a statement about why.

Here's the NY Post column. Excerpt:

This year’s presidential election hasn’t provided the catharsis that many on the left were awaiting. Instead of the hoped-for “Blue Wave,” we have a still-too-close-to-call presidential election, while Republicans picked up House seats and appear to have held on to the Senate. One response might be self-criticism: to wonder how, after four years of single-mindedly trying to get rid of Trump and marginalize his followers, things didn’t go better. Instead, Democrats’ thinkers seem to be asking themselves variations on “How can I live in a country where half the people supported Donald Trump?”...

How the NYT and the Washington Post have caught up on the New York Post Hunter Biden story.

The NYT has this story, which, it says, went up 11 hours ago: "Allegation on Biden Prompts Pushback From Social Media Companies/Joe Biden’s campaign rejected assertions made in a published report that were based on unverified material from Trump allies. Facebook and Twitter found the story dubious enough to limit access to it on their platform." 

The reaction of the social media companies — censorship — is most prominent, followed by Biden's reaction — rejection of the assertions and questioning of the material. The social media reaction is presented as reinforcing the Biden campaign rejection and — it is implied — justified by the "dubious" quality of the report. That the NY Post put the material in a news article isn't mentioned in the headline.

The Washington Post story, which went up at 10:45 CDT, has a much shorter headline, stressing the aggression of Trump supporters and the lateness of the attack: "Three weeks before Election Day, Trump allies go after Hunter — and Joe — Biden." 

From the NYT article: 

I'm not horrified by "the latest horrifying subway trend."

If you have an app on your phone that lets anyone within 300 feet of you send you files because you've got the setting on "Everyone" (and not "Contacts Only" or "Receiving Off"), you should expect to receive dick pics. But the New York Post presents this as a "horrifying trend" story:

Britta Carlson, 28, was riding the uptown 6 train to a concert on July 27 when a mysterious message popped up on her smartphone.

“iPhone 1 would like to share a note with you,” read the note sent at 6:51 p.m. She hit “Accept” and was horrified by what she saw. “It was just a huge close-up picture of a disgusting penis,” said Carlson, of Bushwick, Brooklyn...."

She even hit "accept"!

... “It really felt like someone had actually just flashed me.... It never even crossed my mind that someone may use it to send stuff like that"....

How can you be 28 years old and capable of riding on the subway in New York City and have a mind that wouldn't imagine such a thing happening?

Yes, of course, it's fake news. It's click bait. And yet, I would encourage you to click just to see the photograph of the expression on Britta Carlson's face — as she holds up her iPhone and reenacts the "horror" that struck at 6:51 p.m. on July 27. I don't know if she re-drew her eyebrows into the oh-it's-so-disgusting position for the photo-session.

By the way, was the penis in the photograph diseased or deformed in some way, or was it called "a disgusting penis" simply because it was a penis? Penises don't deserve that kind of free-floating contempt.

What is happening with Bill de Blasio? Has he given up even trying to appeal to ordinary voters?

The Post has 3 articles in that edition: "De Blasio’s bizarre humbug in Hamburg," "NYPD union head slams de Blasio for skipping slain cop’s vigil," and "De Blasio skips slain NYPD cop’s vigil to praise police in Germany."

"The 'administrator' of the sick 'Blue Whale' suicide game has been traced by police back to a Moscow postman."

"Ilya Sidorov, 26, reportedly has confessed to conceiving and creating the social media game that gave youths a series of increasingly risky dares — ending in their own suicides."

Police questioned Sidorov over allegedly instructing a 13-year-old girl in the remote village of Yetkul to jump under a passenger train.... Sidorov allegedly broke down under interrogation...

Philipp Budeikin, 21, is also being held by Russian police, charged with coaxing up to 16 schoolgirls to kill themselves....

Broke down under interrogation... I am not trusting the Russian police, and I do not like seeing American newspapers passing along stories like this in what looks like titillation. This is the New York Post, with this teaser in the sidebar (a still from video you can watch at the link):



Yes, doesn't he look like a "sick mess"? How cute do you think you'd look if you suddenly found yourself arrested by the Russian police? How do you think you would do under interrogation? What's sick is getting off reading articles like this.

"The New York Post Has Come Up With Their Greatest Troll Yet."

Says Gabriella Paiella (at New York Magazine).

Here's the hilarious cover of the Post.



Paiella writes:

Let’s review who loses in this article: First, Dan Rochkind — the man who they used for the lede image — who says he’s sworn off dating models even though … well, you can judge the photo for yourself. Then, Rochkind’s fiancée, who, for some reason, agreed to be in an article about a man who’s decided to date less attractive women than he used to. There’s also this guy, who shows up shirtless and playing the violin for some reason. Hot people in general lose because of unfair stereoty- … wait no, haha, scratch that.

But most of all, we lose — while, as always, the Post wins.

5 things wrong with the NY Post headline "Weenies burn flag to protest cops, get attacked by bikers, need cops to save their asses."

Here's the article. Here are the 5 things:

1. The protesters didn't call the cops. The cops were already on the scene because the flag burning was a planned and promoted event. The cops observed the scene, witnessed violence, and following their own standards and judgment, ended it. The headline suggests that the anti-cop protesters cried out for help in their time of need.

2. Speaking out against bad police behavior does not entail an obligation to forgo police protection. The position that police aren't doing their jobs properly doesn't nail you down to the position that there should be no police protection at all. There's no big contradiction between criticizing the police and benefiting from police protection when you're a victim of crime.

3. Someone who exercises freedom of speech in a way that inflames the anger of a crowd is not a "weenie." It may be unwise or rude or stupid, but it's not what weenies do.  "The Weenie State is characterized by an obsession with rules and protocols, reinforced by fear.... Fear of stepping outside the lines. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of looking stupid."

4. The New York Post (in its successful clickbait) adopts the viewpoint of thugs. From the article: "'They took off like little b—hes,' said one biker. 'They lit the f–king flag and took off running once they got slapped once or twice.'" The bikers wanted a physically violent fight, and the protesters chose not to stand their ground but to run, which most people — if they're not distracted by their own anger about flag-burning — probably think is the most rational move. The message to future protesters shouldn't be: Stand up and fight or we'll call you weenies.

5. Since the police were right there to defuse the situation, we don't know whether the flag-burners really did "need cops to save their asses." In the age-old struggle to save your own ass, the 2 big options are fight or flight. When the flight instinct kicks in, it's probably for the best, probably because you're going to lose that fight. Of course, those who wanted to fight will mock and revile you for "taking off like little bitches," but they'd have laughed at the way you'd have gone down if you'd stood and fought. That would, I suspect, have amused them even more.

Millionaire spends $65,000 on 6 matchmakers, goes on 250 dates over 12 years and doesn't find the wife he's looking for.

The NY Post displays Larry Greenfield's pathetic tale of woe:

“I thought he was attractive enough, nice enough. I don’t see why all of these things haven’t worked out,” [said one of the women he deemed inadequate]. “He’s looking for love at first sight, and everyone has imperfections. Talk to someone. Get to know them.

“To find a woman who wants to stay at home and lives in Manhattan, he might be looking in the wrong time period,” Gordon said....