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(photo: balleyne / flickr)
Amid one of the worst thunderstorm events in recent memory, a derecho that originated west of Chicago, in Iowa, and culminated in billions of dollars of damage on the mid-Atlantic coast — from New Jersey to North Carolina! — as well as 13 deaths, the Washington Post decided this was a good weekend to flaunt its owners’ family’s heterosexual privilege.
With a link on their online front page otherwise strewn with disaster imagery and stories, the Post editors made their big boss’s wedding a to-do, despite the “small, quiet” nature of the event itself. Readers are rightly asking, “Can’t these people keep it in the bedroom?”
Washington Post Chairman and CEO Donald Graham was married Saturday evening in Philadelphia to fellow former newspaper executive Amanda Bennett in a small family ceremony.
The longtime friends and colleagues — who served together on the Pulitzer Prize board from 2002 to 2008 — have been dating for about two years.
1%ers will always exercise their privileges, and use their own personal newspapers to alert us to their lovely rituals. But must they shove their filthy habits down the throats of American families? Why need we read about them flaunting their privilege when the Post’s reporters would be better assigned to cover the natural disaster visited on the paper’s circulation area?
Keep it in the bedroom, please, people. Your exercising your civil rights ends at my computer screen.
9 Comments
Teddy, all media coverage of horrific disasters is unconscionably muted. No more interviews with victims of nature’s pushback against Big Oil – if anyone gets interviewed it will be the survivors only. After all, how many interviews do you see with the homeless? None. But it trickles through – like the two little boys in Tennessee who died just because they were playing outside in the sun.
I watched the eerie third round at the Congressional course yesterday – at least they were covering the empty galleries and clubhouse. Mention of the disaster folk were suffering through? Minimal. Much more important to have the corporate spectacle continue. Absent the crowds but who cares? Something symbolic about that but I will leave it to others to expand upon.
What if they had a (fill in the blank) and nobody came?
Dontcha know, Teddy, that wedding announcements for the 1% are what newspapers are for. All others pay cash. That and flaunting debutante balls (“cotillions” in the South). All that other verbiage is incidental to the central message of the newspaper: these people are very important.
Hope these people don’t do anything in public to startle the horses.
Of the five dead people in the DC area being reported last night (I’m sure it’s increased now) three were Olds who died in their beds when trees fell on their houses. This is a symptom of Olds being trapped in their too-big homes and yards by skyrocketing property taxes, being unable to maintain their properties safely.
The common weal is deteriorating badly, and so is private property, to all of our detriment. The best pic, Darwin in action, I saw on the WaPo website was a young mother pushing her baby stroller through puddles on her street, looking up at the power lines downed near her.
I have never before heard of a “derecho.”
Fascinating and deadly. I imagine it will take a long time to get power back so all those people can have air-conditioning again. Terrible thing and it’s obvious that no place is prepared for disaster – laying off police officers and fire fighters etc. And we certainly are not having climate change, now are we? s/
Teddy, Teddy, there you go again. First you indicate that marriage is a privilege permitted by the state, only to some, and then you indicate that it’s a private affair to be confined to the bedroom.
Am I reading this correctly?
It would be helpful if we considered that a committed full-time relationship, sexual or otherwise, permitted by the state and church or not, is a marriage, would it not?
In other words there are no such things as civil rights, rather there are personal rights that we gain when we are born, certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — state and church be damned. We don’t need a higher power to confer our rights, they are inherent.
They are our derechos, compadre, ?no?
So Donnie and Amie can do their thing (they appear to be a little friendly, at least, although they seem mostly interested in the camera) and we’ll do ours.
The oners in the U.S. have not been known for good taste. Newport R.I if you want an example. (I sometimes wonder if they taste good, but I don’t linger on that thought.)
Seems to be one of the distinguishing diffs betw RWMs on this side of the pond vs. RWMs on the other side.
My reflex action, when someone is shoving “Anything” down my throat, is to Gag.
See you later, Teddy.
Ps, Teddy, that photo up top, on a Sunday Night? Makes me want some excellent chocolates. Sayin’.