A former ombudsman for The Washington Post offered some unsolicited advice Wednesday to the paper’s new owner Jeff Bezos, urging the Amazon.com founder to can conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin.
Writing in The Washington City Paper, Patrick B. Pexton, who served as ombudsman for the Post from 2011 until March 2013, dispensed some general tips, too, telling Bezos to “grow a thick skin” and to get to know the newspaper’s audience. But his most pointed suggestion came when he addressed Rubin, the author of the Post’s “Right Turn” blog who was perhaps Mitt Romney’s biggest cheerleader in the press throughout last year’s campaign.
Rubin, Pexton wrote, was “the No. 1 source of complaint mail about any single Post staffer” while he served as ombudsman. Bezos should instruct Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor at the Post, to fire Rubin, Pexton wrote.
Not because she’s conservative, but because she’s just plain bad. She doesn’t travel within a hundred miles of Post standards. She parrots and peddles every silly right-wing theory to come down the pike in transparent attempts to get Web hits,” Pexton wrote. “Her analysis of the conservative movement, which is a worthwhile and important beat that the Post should treat more seriously on its national pages, is shallow and predictable. Her columns, at best, are political pornography; they get a quick but sure rise out of the right, but you feel bad afterward.
And she is often wrong, and rarely acknowledges it. She was oh-so-wrong about Mitt Romney, week after week writing embarrassing flattery about his 2012 campaign, calling almost every move he made brilliant, and guaranteeing that he would trounce Barack Obama. When he lost, the next day she savaged him and his campaign with treachery, saying he was the worst candidate with the worst staff, ever. She was wrong about the Norway shootings being acts of al-Qaida. She was wrong about Chuck Hagel being an anti-Semite. And does she apologize? Nope.
Rubin was the No. 1 source of complaint mail about any single Post staffer while I was ombudsman, and I’m leaving out the organized email campaigns against her by leftie groups like Media Matters. Thinking conservatives didn’t like her, thinking moderates didn’t like her, government workers who knew her arguments to be unfair didn’t like her. Dump her like a dull tome on the Amazon Bargain Books page.
