An economic explanation for anti-MAGA hostility among opinion writers at The New York Times and The Washington Post - among other media outlets

An economic explanation for anti-MAGA hostility among opinion writers at The New York Times and The Washington Post — among other media outlets – American Thinker

November 21, 2022

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Let’s begin with the current price of lettuce in the northwest part of The Bronx and monitor the salaries and net worth of media opinion writers sharply opposed to MAGA and Donald J. Trump

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Last week, I noticed — indeed was shocked by — the price of a head of lettuce at a local supermarket. Where, recently, the price was $2.50 or thereabouts, the price was almost doubled to $4.99 a head. “Too rich for my blood,” I thought, right away, appreciating that lettuce had become a delicacy for people living paycheck to paycheck — or, a fortiori, on the monthly Social Security disbursement.

A day or so later, November 17, I checked the price of lettuce at a small fruit and vegetable story on upper Broadway, which always had humane prices. Lo and behold, lettuce at this mom and pop shop was $4.99 a head. I then walked a few blocks north on Broadway to another supermarket. Here the price of lettuce wasn’t $4.99, it was an astronomical $6.99 for a small head of regular lettuce; $6.99 for the romaine version, too. What is going on? I now thought. Why haven’t the New York City media reported this outrageous zoom-up in the cost of lettuce?

The silence of the media lambs on inflation’s drastic effect on the price of lettuce suggests how distant the media has become relative to ordinary people, especially workers living paycheck to paycheck.

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An email exchange with a journalist in Washington, D.C. got me to wondering about a correlation between opinion writers at The New York Times and The Washington Post, and their hostility to MAGA patriots, and Donald J. Trump, the creator and leader of the MAGA movement.

My research began with two Times political columnists, Thomas L. Friedman and David Brooks. I learned that Mr. Friedman’s net worth, as of 2021, is $25 million. That is correct — $25 million.

Friedman and his family enjoy a glitzy lifestyle that is entirely appropriate for their mother’s immense fortune. Interestingly, he constructed a gigantic mansion-like home of 11,400 square feet in size and valued at $9.3 million dollars,

As he is an advocate for higher gas prices, with his financial resources, he can well afford gas prices far above the means of ordinary Americans — not to mention lettuce at $6.99 a head. I then learned that the latest net worth estimate for David Brooks is, quite amazingly, $5 million, an accrual not realized by saving lunch money every day and putting the savings in a little tin box.

Peter Wehner double dips as N.Y. Times opinion writer, while receiving $200,000 per annum from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a hornets-nest of anti MAGA/Trump opinion.

Here is my homework assignment for American Thinker readers. Pick any prominent anti-MAGA propagandist you can think of, William Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, Paul Krugman and so forth and, after typing their name just add “net worth.” The name of the particular anti-MAGA propaganda sheet is not required for this search. More likely than not you will learn that anti-MAGA/Trump opinion writers at The New York Times, Washington Post — or, say, The Wall Street Journal, will have a seven, some have an eight figure — net worth.

The Journal’s Peggy Noonan clocks in with a reported net worth of $3 million. (Just type “Peggy Noonan net worth”.) By the way, a seven figure net worth extends to anti-MAGA reporters at the Times like Luke Broadwater and Charlie Savage (not the soccer-playing Charlie Savage)

James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 57, wrote that a country’s leaders must hold with the people “communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments…without which every government degenerates into tyranny.” [Emphasis added.] Given the anti-MAGA views of a Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post [search phrase “Jennifer Rubin net worth“] or a Paul Krugman at The New York Times [“Paul Krugman net worth“] it is not “cherry-picking” to posit hositlity to MAGA seems a function, for media propagandists, of net worth.

The opinion writer should construct an Iron Curtain to separate his or her financial well-being from sensitivity as to how the “other half” survives. This is not to begrudge 21^st century opinion writers their net worth, a net worth that, in the eyes of the individual, is regarded as a membership card in Club Elite. The problem is that today’s (self-anointed) elite, aiming at the destruction of MAGA, are at odds with Madison’s populist advice in Federalist No. 57.

The anti-MAGA propagandists would turn Federalist No. 57 on its head, replacing “communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments” with the people — by an “ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few.”

Consider, however, the logical extension of Madison’s caveat. Where communion and sympathy, held by elites toward people do not exist, tyranny happens.

Graphic credit: Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free.org