Is Immigration now a No-Go Zone for the MSM? is it possible to write a take-out on Ted Cruz’s strategy for winning the 2016 GOP presidential nomination without mentioning, even once, his opposition to delusional establishment Amnesty-First schemes for legalizing the current illegal immigrant population — and the potential for that opposition to a) help him cut down GOP rivals and b) appeal to the moderate white working class voters he’d desperately need in a general election? You would think the national political correspondent for the New York Times would not make that mistake. You would be wrong. …

It’s not a mistake, of course. The  establishment press really doesn’t want to talk about immigration. It’s like a sore spot in a relationship:  ‘If we ignore it maybe it will go away and nobody will be upset.”  So large mysterious things happen — the Department of Homeland Security is threatened with a shutdown, maybe Ted Cruz starts to get traction — without apparent explanation. Perhaps it’s the result of global warming, or Mercury is in retrograde [No-ed..] …

This seems to be the next big thing in cocooning: Don’t confect positive trends (like the popularity of amnesty) or downplay unfavorable trends (like opposition to amnesty). Just ignore the whole business completely. I predict trouble. …

Fox’s Kurtz says Tucker Carlson’s “No-Trash-Fox” rule “helps undercut his site’s independence.” … Those Fox people are vicious! First they scare Carlson into performing demeaning acts. Then they shoot him for doing it. Next they’ll bill him for the cost of the bullets. …

This Slate article (“The Dark Secrets That Dolphins Don’t Want You to Know”) will be great on Vox! …

Rules: Emailer R suggests that New Republic, under Marty Peretz, had a “No-Trash-Gore” rule similar to Tucker Carlson’s “No-Trash-Fox” rule at Daily Caller. That was not my experience. True, Marty had his areas of … concern. But I remember several times trying to quit on principle — there’d be all that good publicity, plus no deadlines for a while — only to have Marty or his editors at the last minute graciously relent and publish. So annoying.  People at TNR argued with Marty a lot — you never had to worry that he was secretly mad at you. But he also had an academic’s tolerance for wild contention. Seems quaint now. …

P.S.: The Washington Monthly under Charlie Peters was different. TWM, as others have noted, wasn’t a forum for ideas. It was a forum for Charlie’s ideas. If you wanted to get your piece published you pretty much had to convince Charlie it was right, on policy as well as facts. But you knew that was the deal going in (plus Charlie has sound judgment). And once he had something he wanted to say Charlie was fearless about saying it even if it might offend people who could do him lots of favors — which he, in fact, repeatedly did. (I do remember he had a “One Block Rule,” which is he would avoid angering neighbors he actually had to see in the morning when he went out the front door.)  Perhaps as a result, Charlie did not get rich off his magazine– even lawyer-rich. But he didn’t seem to need to. [Also quaint?-ed You said that …].

Knowledge of the Daily Caller‘s “No-Trash-Fox” rule appears to have been less than universal among the staff. I don’t remember it. Matt Lewis doesn’t remember it. We both published pieces that violated it. When was it officially formalized? (Last Monday morning?) …