Stop the presses!
No, it’s not a joke.
It’s not satire from “The Onion.”
This is the Virginian Pilot banner headline - front page center - on New Year’s Eve.
And if you think that this is an aberration, the following day’s front page features “Norfolk doctor turns 180 pounds of sugar into Chrysler Museum.” Complete with a color photograph of this creation.
Happy New Year?
This is not some rinky-dink student publication. The Pilot is Virginia’s largest daily, serving Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News and smaller communities in Southeastern Virginia and parts of North Carolina.
It’s all because of Trump.
Following Trump’s election something snapped in the editorial offices of the Pilot. The staff, never tightly wound, lost their marbles. They joined the Resistance. Whether it’s news or opinion it’s all Trump hate all the time.
They news section is anti-Trump cut-and-paste from the AP and the Washington Post.
The editorial page is a Trump haters primal scream.
Each edition accuses Trump and those around him of being ignorant, greedy, corrupt, unqualified, biased, crooked, profane, criminal, racist liars who want to destroy the planet. According to the people whose letters the editors choose to publish Trump is Putin’s puppet; the “corrupt and destructive agent of a foreign enemy who is wreaking damage from the White House." Trump’s supporters are “either blind or willfully ignorant,” when they're not toothles racist bigots marrying their sisters.
The Pilot alternates between blaming Trump for the death of children and the destruction of humanity via Global Warming. Few days pass that don’t contain the dire threat of Norfolk sinking beneath the waves as the result of global warming … climate change that, according to the ladies that run the Pilot, represent an “existential threat” to the area. To be fair to the ladies, Norfolk’s inundation has been forecast by the Pilot even before it became Trump’s fault. Yet somehow, decades after the end of life as we know it was predicted, Norfolk and Virginia Beach are still here.
To stop the rising oceans the Pilot implores you to change your lifestyle: stop flying, stop driving, go meatless, recycle and buy carbon credits. Once you’re a vegan using all the money you’re saving composting at home to buy carbon credits you are encouraged bicycle to workshops and public meetings to “help make more effective climate initiatives.”
That would make you a hermit (except for the meetings), take you back to the 19th century (except for the meat eating), or attract someone like Colin Arnold, recent Old Dominion University graduate with a degree in fine arts, seeking to volunteer and work in non-profits (according to his LinkedIn profile) and contributor to the Pilot editorial page.
This is simply a small, small part of why the press in this country is not dying … it’s committing suicide.
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