Ed Rogers’ column (Washington Post, 9/4/17) warning that Democrats “are now captive to the party’s left-wing fringe” due to a “dangerous lurch to the left.”
What is the point of Ed Rogers, the Washington Post’s most conflict-ridden, mediocre columnist (FAIR.org, 4/23/15)? He doesn’t add a lot to the discourse, his boilerplate Republican talking points could be better written by any number of Heritage fellows, he shills for Trump in the most boring ways possible, and—most glaringly of all—is an actual paid lobbyist for an assortment of sleazy industry interests, via his lobbying firm BGR Group.
So why does a major paper feel the need to continue to give him column inches? Rogers has major conflicts of interest, as AlterNet and Media Matters have noted: Among many other infractions, he neglected to mention his firm’s $500,000 fee from the Saudi regime while boosting Trump’s PR trip there, and promoted the shiny new weapon systems of his client Raytheon on the night Trump used them to bomb the Syrian Air Force.
When he does disclose conflicts, it renders the rest of his writing limp and risible. Take his latest right-wing missive (9/5/17) lamenting the “lurch to the left” of the Democratic Party, which offers up one of the greatest self-owns in the history of the Post opinion section:
Economic policies [of the Democrats in 2020] will consist of government giveaways and anti-business crusades. Social causes will give no quarter to moderate positions, and LGBT special interests, labor unions, global warming fanatics and factions such as Black Lives Matter, along with other grievance industry groups, will face no moderating counterforce. (Disclosure: My firm represents interests in the fossil fuel industry.)
It’s rare for a screed to undermine its own credibility in such a glaring and amusing fashion—to rail against a made-up “grievance industry” only to follow up by letting the reader know that the writer himself shills for a very real and widely loathed fossil fuel industry. The rub is Rogers’ disclosure, such as it was, was only fraction of what it ought to have been.
Ed Rogers’ BGR profile. Note that the 58-year-old Rogers has been a lobbyist for more than half his life.
Almost every “left” issue Rogers opposes conflicts with one of BRG’s corporate or government clients. Let’s run them down:
- “A $15 minimum wage”: BRG clients include the Asia-Pacific Council of American Chambers of Commerce, HNTB Holdings (construction), Caesars Entertainment and a number of corporations reliant on low-wage work.
- “Free college tuition”: BRG client Flagstar Bank issues student loans.
- “Single-payer health-care system”: BRG clients include GlaxoSmithKline, Senior Care Pharmacy Alliance, Lifecare Hospitals, Merck & Co, Eli Lilly, Neurocrine Biosciences and a host of others profiting from for-profit healthcare.
- “Labor unions”: Toyota Motor Corp, Caesars and any corporate client whose profits are threatened by a strong labor movement.
Clearly, an aggressive left-wing agenda would be a major threat to the bottom line of scores of Rogers’ clients. The fossil fuel industry apparently rises to a level of manifest terribleness that made Washington Post editors feel they had to demand a token disclosure. Those lobbying for low wages, massive student loan debt and exploitative private healthcare evidently do not.
Having a lobbyist moonlight as a columnist, of course, is inherently conflicting; the major corporate, financial and fossil fuel interests Rogers represents will, by definition, pollute his writings as surely as his clients do the Earth.
Perhaps Post editors can stop and examine their priorities when one of their columnists has to write, “Disclosure: My firm represents interests in the fossil fuel industry,” in the same 48-hour period three massive hurricanes formed in the Atlantic. The Post seems to be filling a niche that doesn’t need filling: insider oil company pitchman with run-of-the-mill GOP positions.
Rogers’ piece bizarrely went on to claim the 2020 Democratic nominee will attempt to “normalize” and “show common cause” with “the antifa”:
But just as the right tries to normalize President Trump, the left will try to normalize the antifa. As the rationalization gets underway, the presidential candidates wanting to distinguish themselves in a crowded field will be tempted to show common cause and try to harness the antifa fury. The pandering to come will be nauseating, but nonetheless compelling to watch.
Even aside from Rogers’ glaring conflicts, this section is worth highlighting because it shows what an amazingly poor writer he is. It’s a series of lazy ideological assumptions built on top of each other that thinks antifa is called “the antifa” and Democrats seek to embrace radical anarchists, despite the top Democrat in the country coming out expressly against it. Indeed, if Rogers were a venal industry hack who could also write well and make original points, his existence on Washington Post’s payroll would be more understandable. But he’s not; he’s both corrupt and a banal, unlettered writer, leading one to ask, again—what is the point of Ed Rogers?
Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @PostOpinions. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
“What is the point of Ed Rogers, the Washington Post’s most conflict-ridden, mediocre columnist (FAIR.org, 4/23/15)? ”
What is the point of supporting FAIR when it’s writers are fast becoming as snide and snarky as any on the Internet? In your action alerts you remind us that respectful communcation is the most effective. Take your own advice or pack it up and go home.
I’ll have to agree; “What is the point of [human being]” is a pretty awful way to frame media criticism. The criticism itself is fully justified; it is undermined by this kind of snark, even if it plays well with the Twitter crowd.
> “What is the point of [human being]” is a pretty awful way to frame media criticism.
Really? Should FAIR start putting trigger-warning clickthroughs atop each of Johnson’s pieces? Or maybe you should start getting your media criticism from Nice Liberals like, say, “On the Media”?
I think that the author did a fantastic job of leading the reader to answer this question. The answer is: the point of Ed Rogers is to push the agenda of his lobbying firm in one of the largest newspapers in the USA.
Ed is trying to define the “far left” position. In actuality these positions are dead on centrist and exactly the kind of governance favored by a majority of US citizens. That’s how we know they are centrist positions.
Ignore the paid sock puppets.
If only people could ignore them. Sadly, most suck down the koolaid offered daily by their “trusted sources” along with their morning coffee and don’t give it a second thought.
That’s why organizations like FAIR, along with independent media outlets, are crucial in this age of information warfare and divide-and-conquer labels.
Oh please.
The Washington Post and its cronies must be getting a nervous these days, seeing as how their trolls have been showing up- lying like they do, so often
Where do these cretins come from?
> Where do these cretins come from?
I’m ashamed to admit that I’m still unable to be unsurprised when self-styled progressives assume that neoliberal views are merely uninformed. OHH’s widely-shared position seems to be that if US rightwingers were properly educated (or smart enough to be properly educated) there would be no political rightwing. (Or it would be something like NPR, presuming there will always be a spectrum of views.) Aside from over-credulousity regarding the powers of wisdom and will (as Aristotle pounded into various post-Socratics 2500 years ago), it ignores public, empirical evidence about how rightwing politicians perform (a verb I’m using in the sense of “hey, kids, let’s put on a show”). Just one example:
George W. Bush, scion of Old East-Coast Money, is a graduate of various organs of elite reproduction. Before the 1980s, when he got more involved with Daddy’s campaigns, by all accounts W acted (in the sense of “behaved”) and sounded like any other graduate of The Kinkaid School, Phillips Academy, Yale, and HBS. (This is apparently part of why Kent Hance beat W in 1978, despite being greatly outfundraised.) Whereupon W got with the hats and the boots and the West Texas vocal tics. Shortly after deciding to go for the 1994 gubernatorial election, W bought the ranch and “discovered” a passion for “cutting brush” et al. It worked, and kept working as W increasingly embraced folksies and Bushisms in 1998, 2000, and 2004. But as soon as Bush quit politics, guess what–he sold the ranch, moved to Preston Hollow[1], quit brush-cutting and started painting (wonder how that woulda played with his voters ?-) and generally lost the folksy.
So in case you haven’t figured it out yet: as politician, W played (in the sense of “hey, kids, let’s put on a show”) to an audience of probable voters. And played successfully, in the sense that he won elections[2]. The only idiots involved were
* the ones who voted for W as an anti-elitist “man of the people”
* the ones who kept joking about idiot-less villages in Texas as the alleged Idiot-in-Chief kept kicking their political asses.
Corporate neoliberals (including Corporate Party Democrats as well as the Ed Rogerses of the world) are evil, not stupid. If they were just stupid, why does US economic and imperial policy continue moving in their direction?
[1]: IIUC sorta the Upper East Side of Dallas–but I’ve only ever drove through Dallas and defer to the judgment of folks who actually know the place.
[2]: And, yes, that includes 2000. Another thing that continues to surprise me is that corporate Democrats have neither noticed that the US does *not* have a national popular vote for president, nor have they mobilized behind the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (which, BTW, does *not* require amending the Constitution). Both W and Trump (or their handlers) *have* noticed this, which is why they win.
I wondered what BGR stood for, and so I found a site that said that the B ws for Haaley Barbour, and the G ws for someone named Griffin, and the R was for the medicore Rogers man. All very involved in the Republican party and one was a governnor of Mississippi and head of the RNC once. Also, a very amusing part that said that the Clinton years were very good for them . LOL, no surprise there, I mean that Cklinton man dissed the PEOPLE by getting rid of Glass-Stegall, Hmm. How depressing this group is. They specialize in health care ( OMG) and telecommunications ( of course) and financial, oh yeah, and helped Microsoft in their antitrust case and the DOJ.
So I will always have to think of the BGR group as Big GREEDY Repugnants….. but since the Washington Post is owned by Amazon……have they started outsourcing reporters from 3 rd world countries yet?
Snarky enough, for you William?, Because sometimes, the TRUTH is snarky : )
how anyone can still read the post and post their stupid articles on Russia and believe their insincere slogan “democracy dies in darkness” is beyond me.