From the Department of Where We Go From Here Department

It's been a week-plus. Let's look at how everybody's doing

There was a time, as recently as two months ago, when I was not Ms. Pacman for political news. Oh the dulcet days of covering street protests and listening to a podcast about the French Revolution while baking a cherry pie…

Well no more! We’re in it to win it, and speaking of:

Feel free to comment, as 41 people have since last night, on why you voted for whom you did, or why you did not vote at all. I am especially curious about the phenomenon - or what seems a phenomenon to me - of people who’d never voted for Trump (and never would) feeling, well, relief is the word I keep hearing. I’ma stay Switzerland here, while stating that, for a journalist, the reshuffle feels like nothing so much as opportunity. You’ve seen the stats, yes? MSNBC’s suffered a 51% drop in primetime viewership; CNN, 26%, and the numbers were not so great to begin this.

The data is neither reason to gloat nor rejoice. It just is. You can blame the more liberal media’s failure on a lot of things; my pals and I have spent innumerable hours parsing these and will continue to. But what we do now is more interesting, which is why I can understand people feeling as though there’s more air in the sails with a Trump victory, simply because things feel different.

Which could be great or could be terrible! I’ll be reporting on the Trump transition for Reason, which means I am talking with a lot people. (Fave Trump analogy thus far, from someone who worked with the first Trump administration: “He’s like the eye of Sauron, you have to be hobbit-like and stay out of its vision and quietly get your work done.”) In the past two days, three of the sharpest people I know have gone from curious about Trump’s cabinet picks to, “Oh my god is he running us right into the thresher?”

Additional views: on RFK as HHS nominee, from Liz Wolfe in this morning’s Reason Roundup:

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—bear scavenger, Peter Luger Steak House appreciator, wannabe journalist impregnator, brainworm victim, once (and future?) Just Asking Questions guest (in its nascent form)—will soon be in charge of some 20 percent of the federal budget, because fuck it, why not?

More RFK, from Nellie Bowles’ every-week-banger TGIF:

A man just knocked on my door wanting to know if I have a black plastic spatula, but I’ve hidden it here in my desk. There’s about to be a new Red Scare, but it’s going to be a list of people who keep their laptop on their groin too long. So many bros are going to get into ball tanning, there will be a ball sunscreen boom (my next company, but this has been so fun while it’s lasted). Heroin will be legal, but anyone caught with movie theater butter popcorn is to be executed on the spot.  

There’s also concern over Matt Gaetz, five opinions of which I’ve heard since his nomination for Attorney General, from "transition trolling at its most refined" (Mark Halperin) and “the populist progressive case for” (Lee Fang), to “Crazy” (small l libertarian), “What. The. Fuck” (moderate Dem) and “I like him!” (MAGA).

Welcome to end days 2024. Send me your tips and your worries. In the meantime, links to some good work I read this week, starting with Richard Rushfield’s fantastically funny and cutting description of how the country’s most profitable newspaper slowly and then all at once dug its own grave.

How the L.A. Times Drove its Clown Car Off the Cliff

“But it’s impossible to convince a skeptic that you’re the party of fun when you’re also the party accused of, and sometimes engaged in, taking beloved things away—gas stoves and cows come to mind—because “it’s good for humanity.” - Mike Pesca, “The HR-ification of the Democratic Party” (The Atlantic).

The HR-ification of the Democratic Party

“The Other Side of the World’s Largest Dam Removal,” by J.B. MacKinnon (Hakai Magazine), an interactive feature about how “removing dams from the Klamath River in Northern California seems like a clear win for fish and rivers. Why do some locals hate it?” The piece is prismatic and emotional; you think you know what’s happening and then MacKinnon goes one layer deeper, then another. It’s long piece but stay with it; I was covered in goosebumps when I got to the end.

“Lacey's path from journalist to felon is at once unique—a product of particular times, temperaments, technological changes, and moral panics—and all too familiar. It's a story of how far government agents will go to punish people who defy them, and a playbook for authorities intent on wresting more control over online speech of all sorts.” So writes Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown, in “The Backpage Trial Finally Ends - With a Suicide and a Sentencing.” The decade-long saga is imo a horrible miscarriage of justice, and one reason, among others, I could never vote for Harris.

Getting back to state of media and where we go from here, Matt Welch (bottom right), has a question for you. Leave your answers in the comments!

What Journalism Do You Trust? A Solicitation.