Back when we were in journalism school, back when it was still a career you could expect to exist when you retired — hell, back when you could expect the world to outlive you — the most important class we took was libel law.

Or, as we called it: How to keep your publisher out of trouble. Those deep pockets they’re coming after aren’t yours, man.

The benchmark was 1964’s Times v. Sullivan, interesting in itself for its glimpse into the civil-rights era, but operative for the profession in what libel ultimately amounts to: Not just getting facts wrong, but “reckless disregard of their truth or falsity”.

Reckless Disregard has been the bumper sticker ever since. It’s a perfectly turned expression for the purpose, commanding a good-faith effort to get shit right. And, if you take it to heart — as we did — it entails not just factual accuracy, but representing the story, the whole story, or at least your best understanding of it. That means getting at the reality of the story you’re telling, not the “both sides” of an issue.

Yeah, it can be Rashomon out there sometimes, but that’s just the job.

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“[The Cybertruck] doesn’t have a brake pedal. Why? We didn’t have to do that. It doesn’t need one.”
–Elon Musk

• You’ll feel no pain when your head smashes into the shatterproof windshield.
• Framed notarized certificate and titanium wallet card declaring your dick isn’t that small.
• The optional Westworld android to cheat the diamond lane during your commute definitely won’t kill you.

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Congratulations to Junior’s book “Triggered” for being #1 on the New York Times bestseller list!†

Wait, what’s that dagger doing there?

If you’ve followed the NYT Bestseller Game over the years, you know the dagger is equivalent to an asterisk on a baseball stat: Something’s fishy there. Maybe the batter was juiced. Maybe someone bought a ton of copies to goose sales reports. Happens all the time.

That’s why the dagger exists, of course. Once upon a time, the NYT caught publishers gaming their system, and… continued to let them get away with it. Triggered is still #1, after all. Just because bulk purchases undermine what the list purports to express, that’s no reason to disqualify them. Just add a “Not really!” that everyone is free to ignore.

Like, you know, the relationship between American citizens and their government.

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We’ve hated our generation since Disco.

You need to understand this about us, the resentment we’ve harbored for kids our age from the moment kids our age were swept away by Saturday Night Fever. You need to understand this about that moment, that pre-Internet moment, that pre-cable moment, when there was no escape from what everyone was watching and listening to.

The previous generation got the Beatles. We got stuck with the Bee Gees.

Don’t call us a Boomer.

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Stick to sports, they say.

That’s what they told Deadspin. Deadspin, a website founded on the premise of not sticking to sports at all. They, in this case, being the guys who own Deadspin, the guys who own it after the previous guys owned it, the guys who bought it from Nick Denton, who sold it because some billionaire set out to destroy Gawker.

Stick to sports. Stick to the game.

Deadspin’s rise and fall was the game.

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The fucking retards at the New York Times fell for the explanation that was held out under their noses and typically, exactly like the newspaper that allowed Judith Miller to go OOGA!BOOGA!WMD!WMD! on their front pages, they fucking fell for it with this ridiculous confection: “He came of age in Queens, built Trump Tower, starred in “The Apprentice,” bankrupted his businesses six times, and drew cheering crowds and angry protesters to Fifth Avenue after his election. Through it all, President Trump — rich, bombastic and to many Americans the epitome of a New Yorker — was intertwined with the city he called his lifelong home.”

Oh! Oh! Isn’t that an eversoclever lead? No, Maggie, it’s completely and utterly beside the fucking point and a deep source of shame that the newspaper can’t have a lawyer hanging around to read stuff like this before it makes the readers barph:

The salient fact is: TRUMP’S DAD’S LAWYERS KNOW THE MAGAPOCALYPSE IS AT HAND and are forcing Donniecakes to take cover under Title XV / Chapter 222 of Florida law for Homestead and Exemptions, widely known to scammers as the Sue Me to the Threshold laws. The kid is subject to so many suits and investigations now, it is all but certain he is going to be sued for every asset he has or ever imagined, including the shithouse at Mar-a-Lago.

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Time was when we thought it would be enough to keep a list.

Keep track of every policy he enacted, every policy he reversed, and come 12:01 pm January 20, 2021, switch them all back.

We actually thought that. We knew it wouldn’t undo all the damage he’s done, but at least it would help contain it.

It’s not gonna work that way.

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