When I found out Friday that the New York Times was ending Charles Blow’s regular column, it was like the boot of truth had slammed onto my shoulders with a thunderous clap.
An editor at the paper reportedly sent out an internal memo informing staff Friday that Blow’s departure was among the ways the Times opinion section would be reoriented, which means the publication will see a severe decline in mutilated metaphors, juvenile arguments, and the most unoriginal writing to ever hold such a prestigious place in news journalism. I’ll miss it dearly.
Most of my career in journalism has been some form or another of reporting and commenting on people like Blow, the writers and TV talkers who have some degree of influence on the national political discourse. Ever since I can remember, he’s been one of my all-time favorites, in no small part because he’s a parody of black Democrat males in media — nakedly insecure, defensive, and undeservedly bestowed with a position of prestige. He’s also incredibly dishonest, a word I use instead of just calling him dumb.
I broke the story that Blow in 2015 had publicly accused a police officer at Yale of racially profiling his son, while Blow never once mentioned to his audience that the officer himself was also black. Kind of an important omission.
But more importantly, Blow’s columns, without exception, were the clunkiest, most superficial, self-serious pieces of writing. I’ve always assumed each one he filed went to an editor who passed it around to the other editors and they all shared a stifled laugh in the office at just how bad the latest was. Charles Blow, a bisexual man who has written two memoirs (too many memories for just one) is without question the worst writer I’ve ever made sure to read as part of my professional career.
He’s so bad that, over the years, I’ve entertained myself by finding some of the worst lines in his columns — there were always multiple in each — and sharing them on Twitter. One of them went viral among the political Twitter nerds for just how mind-numbing Blow’s phrasing was. It appeared on Oct. 19, 2017, well into Donald Trump’s first term as president, under the headline, “Trump Isn’t Hitler. But the Lying …”
The searing originality of a back-door comparison between Trump and Hitler was Blow at his Blowiest. And here’s the part from that sidesplitting piece that is forever ingrained in my heart:
“Maybe I have crossed the ink-stained line of the essay writer, where Hitler is always beyond it. But I don’t think so. Ignoring what one of history’s greatest examples of lying has to teach us about current examples of lying, particularly lying by the ‘president’ of the most powerful country in the world, seems to me an act of timidity in a time of terror. It is an intentional self-blinding to avoid offending frail sensibilities.
“I have neither time nor patience for such tiptoeing. I prefer the boot of truth to slam down to earth like thunder, no matter the shock of hearing its clap.“
It had everything I had come to expect from Blow: self-reverence, sanctimony, tortured metaphors that spark second-hand embarrassment. It’s truly blissful.
There were so many just like it, as was the time Blow, a self-identified journalist, bragged that he refused to attend a meeting with the incoming president of the United States. Just after the 2016 election, Trump agreed to speak in person with writers at the Times in its New York office.
“I will say proudly and happily that I was not present at this meeting,” Blow blew. “The very idea of sitting across the table from a demagogue who preyed on racial, ethnic and religious hostilities and treating him with decorum and social grace fills me with disgust, to the point of overflowing.”
It’s all so fascinating. Blow, who somehow secured the loftiest gig in this business despite having no professional record as a writer (he was a graphics artist beforehand), thought it not only appropriate but brag-worthy that he declined to see and question the most newsworthy figure in the world. And he wasn’t fired! Amazing!
It’s sad to think he will no longer be on the paper of record. But shed no tears for Blow. On the same day it was announced he would no longer be a columnist for the Times, Harvard named him as its “inaugural fellow” for some new initiative related to the university’s “commitment to nurturing voices that challenge, inspire, and transform our understanding of the African American experience.” That should be riveting.
Best of luck to Blow and those who he reaches with more of his writing. With that, here are some of my favorite lines from Blow through the years:
“Where did you learn to fight, in a pillow factory?”
“How had I grown accustomed to the smell of dirty bar towels and cheap disinfectant?”
“Trump has been harder to pinch than flesh slathered in tanning oil.”
“So yes, I am furious at the unvaccinated, and I am not ashamed of disclosing that.”
“In America, and throughout the diaspora, all Black people are linked together like a chain of paper dolls.”
“As someone who is Black and queer, allow me to borrow from that vernacular, and say in a tone dripping with disdain: ‘Child, please.’”
“[T]hey only appreciate the knife when they hold the handle and the blade is pointed away from them.”
“I apparently don’t have enough gay-obvious affectations for some people, although there are quite a few people in my high school who would beg to differ.”
“The death dealing of Covid amounts to the Appalachians of ignorance.”
“Right-wing extremists and sometimes avowed white supremacists make people vulnerable and prey on the vulnerable, so they need the appearance of defending the vulnerable …”
“There is not only blood on Trump’s hands, he is drenched in it like the penultimate scene from the movie ‘Carrie.’”
“[I]t was a racial Rolex that could always be bartered.”
“[I]t seems obvious that he is being intentionally … provocative in his proposals and pronouncements in order to provoke a reaction …”
Jesus Christ is King
