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A ‘Democracy dies in darkness’ erasure poem

After the editorial staff of the Washington Post drafted an endorsement of Kamala Harris for President, and just as they were about to publish it, Jeff Bezos, billionaire owner of the newspaper, told them they couldn’t do that.

The incident was reported four days ago.

Yesterday evening, Bezos published a column in his newspaper doubling down on his decision.

Here, I’ve visually screened out some words, like redactions in a legal document. The result is what’s called an erasure poem. In this genre, it’s inevitable that the original meaning of the words will be indecipherable. In some cases, the erasure may even suggest the opposite meaning of the original.

Bezos’s statement — the real one, before I erased it — fails to make his case.

The hard failure starts in the fourth paragraph. There, he says that a newspaper’s endorsement of a presidential candidate won’t persuade a single voter and thus certainly won’t tip the election outcome.