WASHINGTON – Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee said today that her newspaper had not copied a New York Times headline about China’s president that read, “Eyeing his future, Xi Jinping rewrites the past,” when it wrote its own headline saying, “With his eyes on the future, Xi Jinping seizes control of the past,” because the two headlines were obviously so dissimilar in style, craftsmanship and intonation when pronounced out loud that anyone accusing her or her newspaper of outright plagiarism surely did not have an advanced degree in journalism from a leading institution of higher education like she and many of her esteemed colleagues did.
Buzbee said the headline had been carefully vetted by the Washington Post editorial board before it was published, adding that the board was “very mindful” not to use “rewrites the past” in its own headline, but wanted to veer in an entirely different direction from the Times by painting President Xi in a more politically aggressive and opportunistic light, which is why it instead wrote “seizes control of the past.”
“In making a distinction in our headline as to how Xi was approaching the past while eyeing his future, we clearly diverged from the garden-variety headline writing of the New York Times, offering our own global readership and thought-leadership vertical a starkly intellectual contrast,” Buzbee said. “I fully stand by my editorial staff and their correct decision to publish this headline.
The move by senior Commie Party officials in the mainland to approve the reassessment of the party’s 100 years of history came as Xi was elevated in stature to the role of Lord God King above just about everyone, including Confucius and the other Chinese tyrants from history that the international media now says were actually way better than Xi, who both the Washington Post and New York Times view with a certain amount of disdain because of his policies toward Xingjiang’s Uighur population, and also his sweet, perfectly manicured coif.
Buzbee, however, was careful to make the distinction between truly exploitatative and genocidal policies, like the one she said China was carrying out against the Uighurs, and the Washington Post’s headline style mandate to boldly copy-cat your oafishly large news neighbor in order to both flatter and hopefully get a job with them some day when your own operation goes tits up.