The Trucklers

Media still circling drain. Journalists assert autonomy. Radicalism in the wings.

graffiti in DUMBO (average home price $2.09m)

Dear David Geffen, Hi my name is Kurt Cobain, Im the lead singer, guitar and songwriter for the band NIRVANA. Ive made your company a lot of money. Oh well, it never was a goal of mine to be part of the mainstream corporate world. Ive never met you I guess because Ive never wanted to. Sincerely Kurt Cobain

“Truckle” is a great and dated word. It denotes a a low and bruising bed that rolled under a real bed so servants could be kept close and subservient to their masters.

As a verb, with “to,” it means to bow and scrape. Here it is in a sentence: Mark Zuckerberg truckled before Donald Trump in giving Meta a “MAGA-.friendly makeover.”

No memory foam for you, peasant!

In frustration over all the truckling required—before MAGA, before Vichy both-sidesism, and before private equity—the new podcast, “What Rough Beast,” is free, ad-free, and a work entirely of volunteerism.

Others are evidently making the same choice to break out.

While it’s horrifying to see so many plutocrats who formerly coded liberal abase themselves, it reciprocally thrilling to find many excellent minds—from editorial board members to cartoonists to journalists—defy MAGA-trucklers like Bezos, Soon-Shiong, Zuckerburg, and Musk to venture out on their own.

Having come up in a neoliberal country without social programs, believing that only billionaire protections stood between me and foreclosure and hopeless medical debt, I recognize that not-truckling often involves a monstrous paycut and supreme loss of security. Everyone has to make their own decisions about their finances, their wellbeing, their integrity, and their bosses.

For this reason, I don’t begrudge George Stephanopoulos (who was “apoplectic, humiliated” after Disney boss Bob Iger truckled to Trump), though I can’t imagine it was an easy decision.