Every day brings with it the same threat: the possibility of learning something new about Free Press reporter Olivia Reingold.
The author of an historically malevolent piece of journalism has not been shy about using social media to let us all know how none of her friends like her anymore, on account of all the genocide denial she considers to be her day job. Now she's using it for a different purpose, and that is revealing to the world that she does not understand how to tell, or possibly even recognize, a joke.
I just want to make sure you're prepared for what you're about to be confronted with. Click play on the video below and you will see Reingold attempting to parody John Oliver, who recently did a segment on The Free Press and spent quite a bit of time making fun of Reingold. The result of Reingold's attempt to give Oliver a little taste of his own medicine is a truly disastrous attempt at comedy, which was quickly deleted from her Instagram account.
Well, OK, that wasn't very good. Most people stop following through on the urge to film unfunny "bits" shortly after entering adulthood, but maybe Reingold just didn't hang out with enough skaters in high school. Everyone's life inches along a different path!
There's not much to take from Reingold's performance, other than concern for anyone who has ever been forced to interact with her in a social setting, but the timing of its arrival reveals some insight elsewhere. Semafor's Max Tani reported in his weekly newsletter that Washington Post CEO Will Lewis, with the blessing of owner Jeff Bezos, recently tried to hire Reingold away from the Free Press and make her "one of the first new faces in the paper’s overhauled opinion section." The plan, according to Tani, was to "hire Reingold to create written and video opinion content."
You can spend a lot of time thinking about how and why the current media environment got so bad. A lot of smart people have written articles on the subject that you might find helpful. But sometimes a particularly clarifying incident comes along, and this is one of them. The men in charge of one of the biggest newspapers in the country thought it would be a good idea to make someone who would bomb at the middle school talent show the new face of their video-based opinion section.
Then again, whatever videos she might have produced for the opinion section would probably be better than the writing it's been pumping out lately.
