Yes, it’s true. The Washington Post, in its infinite wisdom and general gutlessness—though I’m sure “pussy-whipped” is far too strong a term—has decided that diversity trumps quality, and Dan, as he reports in his last post, Goodbye, farewell and adieu to Spoiler Alerts, is being eased out, for the greater good—though, frankly, I’m not sure I can put all the blame on the Post for this one. Dan was given every opportunity to “come out” as a transsexual, which would have helped his cause immensely, and his refusal on this point was regarded—justly, I think—as “pissy”. I’ll let Dan tell it first:
We live in an age in which retweeting a tasteless joke and then apologizing and deleting it 10 minutes later still winds up being on your permanent record. Not all infractions are equal, and in some cases such behavior merits serious sanctions. There is something bizarre, however, about the capricious nature of reactions and overreactions to acts that less than a decade ago would barely have merited a shrug.
It is entirely possible that as a middle-aged straight White guy, my read on this is wrong. Another trend I have noticed over the past eight years is that my inner cranky-old-man voice is starting to get louder. I am keenly aware that this voice is not always wrong, but it ain’t always right, either. That said, a public discourse that is implacably hostile to only a particular slice of norm infractions is not fertile ground for the contingent writing that inspired Spoiler Alerts.
“Spoiler Alerts”, for those who, stupidly, haven’t been reading Dan as avidly as I have, is sort of a running gag with Dan, which frankly I never found either amusing or irritating enough to comment on. Apparently, some of his “Spoiler Alerts” rubbed some people the wrong way. At least, that’s his story. I can guess that some menstruator just wanted Dan’s job.
The bit about “retweeting a tasteless joke” refers to a Post world tempest over a retweet by Post non-menstruator Dave Weigel, another “nonstory”, entirely un-snarkworthy in my opinion, a molehill that somehow escalated into a mountain, leading to a two-week suspension for the painfully unfunny Mr. Weigel, and the outright dismissal of would-be woke priestess Felicia Sonmez.
Well, the important thing—the tragic thing—is that Dan is leaving. I devoted endless pixels to bitching about both Dan Drezner and Daniel Drezner, because I found Dan worth bitching about. Dan was a card-carrying member of “The Blob”, the foreign policy establishment, often a very acute critic of its faults and fallacies, but utterly dedicated to the notion that all phone calls must come from inside the building—if you wanted Dan to answer. Dan particularly hated “realists”—“realists” roughly defined as people who think that invading other countries for their own good is generally a bad idea, but, when he could avoid the actual label, Dan could be pretty realistic himself.
Dan was excellent—excellent—on America’s abuse of sanctions, something I was always meaning to give him credit for, but somehow never got around to doing so, which is why I’m urging you now to read his excellent piece from several months ago The United States is stealing Afghanistan’s money—The United States crosses another red line in weaponizing global finance.
Dan will continue writing, I’m sure, though I’ll have to do some actual work to locate his pieces now, and there undoubtedly won’t be as many of them. Ave atque vale, Dan, and keep the aspidistra flying.
Afterwords
Dave’s infamous retweet, “All women are bi—bisexual or bipolar”—really was remarkably stupid—Tucker Carlson level stupid, I would say. But the resulting shitstorm was, well, typical of woke institutions like the Post today.
Must we be flogged at the Post till the end of Times?
The Russians bore Afghans a Red Line that the U.S. tracked in green.