Fellow Texans of a political bent, especially fellow bloggers, will, I hope, get the meaning of the hashtag.
Texas has its state-level version of "inside the Beltway" media. The Mopac freeway doesn't run all the way around Austin, but, as the original bypass, it's a handy symbol for calling out the Austin bureaus and the state-level political analysts at Texas' main seven-day daily newspapers for their suckupitis to Austin's ruling class.
I am including the Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the Houston Chronicle, the San Antonio Express-News and the Austin American Statesman. I'm not as familiar with the El Paso Times, but since it was bought by Gannett earlier this year, which since then bought Corpus Christi and other Journal Sentinel papers, I'll mark it down as an expected suck-up for the future. Anything smaller than these falls under the state-level version of regional papers (Corpus, Laredo, the lower Valley, Lubbock, Odessa, Midland, Beaumont, Amarillo, Waco, Wichita Falls and even smaller.)
On constitutional amendments? I suspect the Lege could put forth a bill to constitutionally enshrine goat-fucking and the inside the Mopac media would all solemnly sign off on it, and offer reasons to support it.
I know this well with the Snooze; having lived in metro Dallas most of the previous decade, there's not an establishmentarian ass that paper won't kiss. I am 119 percent sure that, within the city of Dallas, if the Dallas Citizens Council said, "We support goat-fucking," the Snooze would do the same, on a dime. The Startlegram, I have enough familiarity with it from my time in the Metroplex to say that it's only better by the soft bigotry of low comparisons.
The Chron? I know less about it, but not nothing. It seems to me to tank pretty well itself. The Express-News, especially with bureau consolidation, just follows its lead.
The Stateless? The paper's not as liberal as traditional Austin, and tilts left-neolib to some degree in deference to "new Austin." Plus, in print, it's barely a seven-day daily newspaper anymore, and if Cox can't sell ads into it on Mondays, why keep pretending?
The EP Times? Already checked that box; it's a Gannett paper.
And, per this follow-up post, expect to see more and more "tanking" on the Trans-Pacific Partnership by the Inside the Mopac media.
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