There's no subversive political message in this column. I swear.

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Magazine

There’s no subversive political message in this column. I swear.

By Gene Weingarten
November 3, 2016

So here we are, the final few days before before Election Day, a difficult time for most news editors because we are now forced to enter the Land of the Bland. There is no hard rule about it, but we generally conspire not to run partisan stories, or explosive exposés, during the 48 hours before the election. Our goal is to be scrupulously balanced and un-sensational, giving the readers room to exhale, calm down and weigh their choices judiciously without continued bombardment by advocacy, or by new allegations that can’t be effectively refuted in time. Personally, I, too, will observe the cease-fire. ... The cost of this is that we are self-muzzled. Right now, if we got a juicy tip, even one that sounds in-character enough to be plausible — say, that Hillary Clinton has been lying about her age and is actually 91, or that Donald Trump has been spotted making out with a goat at a children’s petting zoo — we probably wouldn’t run it. (Utter evenhandedness on this day required me to make fun of both candidates in the same sentence.)

My point is, don’t expect much in the way of interesting stuff here or elsewhere in the next couple of days. Ploddingly, we will cover the news. Dutifully, we’ll tell you where the candidates are and what they say, and that’s about it. Only pablum; pablum only. Nutritious it may be, but not very exciting. The flavor of the day is not vanilla — vanilla is too bold! — it’s tofu-infused boiled cauliflower brushed with egg whites and garnished with kale. ... Donald Trump, of course, will make this pledge particularly difficult to stick to because — and I say this without malice or partisanship of any kind — merely covering him and his supporters has sometimes left reporters longing for hazmat suits. (Required balance: Hillary Clinton can be very, very bad, too.)

I wrote this column three weeks ago, so I should point out, to cover my butt, that anything could have happened in the interim. No one has been able to predict the events of a day, let alone three weeks, in this election. Knowledgeable pundits have looked like idiots. Therefore, it is possible that as you are reading this, Trump has withdrawn his candidacy, declared civil war and is commanding a national Trump people’s militia from a bunker beneath Trump Tower. (Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, could have done something awful, too, as she is wont to do.) ... Eh, probably not. Our fate as a nation is probably still linked to the election, for better or worse, and our newspapers, for the most noble reasons, are holding back. Responsibility comes with power.

An honest assessment of this campaign might leave us wondering how we have gotten where we have, featuring a race between a bigoted, ignorant, adolescent bully who electrifies crowds, facing off against a competent and qualified person who — and I am trying to be honest here, and paraphrasing Dave Barry — couldn’t electrify a bathtub with a hair dryer. Not to overstate things. ... Go vote. Exercise your franchise. Kick some suffrage butt. Only, don’t expect any clues about whom to vote for from me. Our goal in these important two days is fact, not favoritism. Look at the candidates, consider their personalities, their temperaments, their skills and their platforms, and decide which one is better for the future of America. ... Above all, remain alert for, and resistant to, subversive efforts to influence your vote by dog-whistle speeches or even insidiously worded columns. In particular, what may seem like harmless sentences initially might conceal cryptic partisan messages. Don’t fall for it.

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Gene Weingarten
Gene Weingarten is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and writes "Below the Beltway," a weekly humor column that is nationally syndicated. Follow https://twitter.com/geneweingarten