The Self-Own of Censorship

 The New York Times ran a story yesterday about some inside drama at their long-time peer in legacy media, The Washington Post. Reportedly, one of the Post's cartoonists just quit due to concerns about editorial interference. Specifically, she alleged that one of her recent cartoons was killed for being overly critical of the paper's billionaire owner (and newly-minted Trump brownnoser) Jeff Bezos. (The paper disputes this narrative of events, and says the cartoon was axed for other reasons.)

If true, this story is interesting because it illustrates quite well the self-defeating nature of censorship. After all, the satirical point of the cartoon was that Bezos, Disney, and other big corporations and billionaire CEOs are enabling Trump's authoritarian rise (the cartoon also implicitly references Disney's recent decision to settle a lawsuit with Trump). So, by practicing censorship against the cartoon, the paper isn't exactly allaying the artist's concerns that it is abetting an autocratic turn in U.S. politics. 

The Yguduhs Won

 Well, it happened. Biden axed the Nippon Steel acquisition of U.S. Steel—likely dealing a death blow to the agreement (barring a successful legal challenge). I hope this doesn't simply doom U.S. Steel and lead to even more job loss in the industry, but there is a real danger that it will. The U.S. manufacturing giant agreed to this merger in the first place, let us recall, because it is struggling to stay competitive. Its current leadership has warned that it may have to close plants entirely; whereas the Japanese company that offered to buy them has committed to keep staffing levels the same. Biden's decision to block the deal, supposedly out of a desire to preserve union jobs, therefore seems completely misguided. 

I've been complaining for weeks now about how Trump is willfully squandering our political capital with our allies abroad—threatening tariffs and trade wars with Western Europe, Canada, Mexico, and our other close neighbors and friends. I've been warning that Trump can only strain these relationships so far without damaging them irreparably. And yet, I have to say—Biden is also not helping things much when he delivers a needless slap in the face of this sort to Japan. One of the most insulting aspects of the whole situation is that the administration ended up citing "national security" grounds as an excuse to block the deal; as if Japan—a close ally and liberal democracy—posed a threat to our interests. 

The Silver Payroll

 When Donald Trump launched his Christmas Day neo-colonial tirade against Panama, one of his arguments in favor of retaking the Canal (in violation of U.S. treaties) was that thousands of Americans had ostensibly given their lives to build it. (38,000, specifically, in Trump's telling.) 

Yet, as the New York Times notes—by way of correction—in fact, the vast majority of those deaths were of workers from Latin America and the Caribbean: migrant laborers who, we can imagine, were brought in to contribute to the U.S. construction effort under less than salubrious conditions. 

Rewatching Frozen

 I can never think back to that review of Disney's Frozen I wrote on this blog more than ten years ago without wincing. It strikes me now as unbearably pretentious. And the fact that my writing has not become any less pretentious in the decade since only makes it worse. Did we really—I think with a cringe of pain—need references to Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Martin Luther in that post? 

But when we re-watched the movie this past week with my nephew and niece (the first time I had seen it in the last ten years)—I had to admit that many of the same thoughts irresistibly occurred to me again. When Elsa stamps her foot during the "Let It Go" number and cries, "Here I'll stand/ And here I'll stay," I once again felt an overpowering urge to compare it to Martin Luther's historic foot-stomp: "Here I stand; I can do no other."