{"id":178601,"date":"2018-10-16T18:49:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T23:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/10\/16\/please-think-of-the-lobbyists\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T18:49:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T23:49:00","slug":"please-think-of-the-lobbyists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/10\/16\/please-think-of-the-lobbyists\/","title":{"rendered":"Please, Think of the Lobbyists!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that murdering their columnists <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2018\/10\/16\/washington-post-lobbyist-writer-909881\">is a bridge too far for the <i>Washington Post<\/i> editorial board<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The <i>Washington Post<\/i> told a prominent Republican lobbyist he\u2019d lose his gig as a contributing opinion writer unless he stopped lobbying for Saudi Arabia, a spokesperson for the newspaper confirmed Tuesday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The ultimatum came after the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. permanent resident who was a columnist for the Post and wrote critically of the Saudi government. Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month, and allegations that he was killed by Saudi authorities have strained the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The lobbyist, Ed Rogers, the chairman of the BGR Group, writes for the newspaper\u2019s PostPartisan blog.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Kristine Coratti Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Post, confirmed that the newspaper told Rogers he\u2019d no longer be able to contribute if he continued to lobby for Saudi Arabia. She declined to comment further.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Lobbying for the slaughter and starvation of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, that&#8217;s fine, but murder one <i>Post<\/i> columnist, that is simply beyond the pals.<\/p>\n<p>As Ian Walsh <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ianwelsh.net\/a-single-death-is-a-tragedy-saudi-edition\/\">so pithily notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">It\u2019s not that Kashoggi\u2019s death isn\u2019t a crime, but that any number of nameless people can be killed, raped, and tortured, and elites don\u2019t care. It\u2019s only when it\u2019s one of them that they care.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Normal people are nothing\u2013less than nothing\u2013to our elites.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But they take care of their own.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But still, we&#8217;re going to help the House of Saud starve, bomb, and burn civilians throughout Yemen.<\/p>\n<p>This is a relationship that is not in the long term interest of the United States. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that murdering their columnists is a bridge too far for the Washington Post editorial board: The Washington Post told a prominent Republican lobbyist he\u2019d lose his gig as a contributing opinion writer unless he stopped lobbying for Saudi Arabia, a spokesperson for the newspaper confirmed Tuesday.The ultimatum came after the disappearance of Jamal &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[817],"class_list":["post-178601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}