Opus DEI

The MAGA "meritocracy" is the opposite.

A view of the city of Reading, Pennsylvania, on November 12, 2024.

Almost everybody in this tale is dead. So at least their feelings won’t be hurt.

It is set in Reading, PA, in 1981. That is a small, post-industrial city an hour from Philadelphia, on the southern edge of a rural Pennsylvania Dutchland county. The county is called Berks, but it should be called Simple Carbohydrate. All food consumed there is a shade of beige. Pork. Turkey. Pancakes. Waffles. Beer. Bread. Sauerkraut. Potatoes. Pretzels. Chips. Funnel cake. Poultry stuffing. Gravy on everything, including, if memory serves, popsicles.

After four years in my first journalism job, I was on my way to greener pastures and foodstuffs — and not a moment too soon. The Reading Times was a shitty little morning paper, circulation 40,000, in editorial competition with the even shittier afternoon paper, the Reading Eagle. Yes, there was once a time when small cities had two daily newspapers, printed on paper, seven days a week. There was an ashtray on every desk and a telephone switchboard with operators. Coffee was 10 cents. High in the sky there was an ozone layer.

I refuse to say what our clothes looked like, because I am still alive, and prone to shame.

So there’s most of your context. The rest is this:

1. The power in the newsroom, even though technically third in command, was a nasty and sleazy martinet whom I shall call “Nick.” Because that was his name. His hobbies were running and berating reporters. The second in command was my dear friend and surrogate father, Ed, who was gentle, calm, encouraging, humble and honest. His hobbies were reading and golf. Nick’s antithesis, basically. He put the paper to bed each night, and so worked second shift, and thus ceded most editorial decisions to his nominal subordinate.

2. Also know that, in addition to breakfast, lunch and dinner, the other thing 100% beige at the Reading Times was the workforce. We looked like a group photo of the Latvian Ministry of Information. There were Klan meetings with more diversity. All white, 90% male.

Why is any of this relevant to anyone or anything? Here’s why. When I finally escaped to a professional newspaper in Wilmington, DE, at my exit interview I went on the record with what everybody already knew: Nick was a cancer on the newsroom, with many unsavory associations that skewed his news judgment and journalistic ethics altogether. Then, about a month later, the editor in chief retired. Everyone assumed he’d be replaced by Nick, who already was the de facto boss. (The departing top editor, Pete — a nice fellow once feared by the rackets but long since checked out — was at that point a ficus.) Furthermore, Nick’s uncle was the general manager of the business operation. But, lo and behold, Ed got the job.

About five minutes later, there was a reshuffling in the newsroom. Nick was demoted and the masthead shifted dramatically. Suddenly, Nick and the staff who took up running in his footsteps were reassigned, replaced by and large by Ed’s choices, golfers one and all.

Did Ed dislike runners? Nope. Not at all. Was he biased toward golfers? No, not really. Remember, this entire pool was white and predominantly male, so there were no other differentiating characteristics to explain such a drastic shift. It was simply this: Ed surrounded himself with people he knew better and was more comfortable with. In short: his tribe. It wasn’t malicious. Just human nature. Birds of a feather and all that. But worrisome.

And a perfect fable dramatizing the need for affirmative action and DEI in 2025.

By encouraging and mandating diversity and inclusion, over time, the tribes intermingle. The sense of unfamiliarity subsides. Preconceived notions, suspicions and biases gradually erode. In that environment, segregation and old-boys’ networks see their bonds weaken, eventually generating the very meritocracy those racist and sexist Republicans are forever demanding. But, of course, they don’t want a meritocracy. They want hegemony, just like in the supremacist bad old days.

The Reading Times is an anthropological study for the ages. If you get a free sec, please forward this post to the piece-of-shit Klansmen now running our country. And may they choke on it.