Chortle Will Not Endorse a Presidential Candidate

A statement from the editor on our craven indecision.

Oct 28, 2024

Chortle will not endorse a presidential candidate in this election.

We choose to follow the bold path recently blazed by the publishers of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. This non-endorsement is a statement of support in our readers’ ability to make up their own minds about which of the two US presidential candidates is a clear and present danger to democracy, and which of them seems like a nice enough lady.

Our publication has among the smartest and most thoughtful readers on the planet. What that tells us is that they don’t care what we have to say. (Duh.) And that’s why it makes perfect sense for us NOT to point out which candidate would sell his mother’s bones to Vladimir Putin in exchange for a Siberian golf resort and which one loves The Kite Runner.

Chortle’s team of experts excels at sifting out facts from fiction. We present that information to our readers with meticulous clarity. And then we pretend like we’re unable to draw any conclusions from it whatsoever. That’s journalism, you idiots.

Our editorial team recognizes that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable.

And yet, we’re doing it anyway! Haha 🖕

To get ahead of online rumormongers, this decision was made completely independent of Chortle’s executive publisher, Richard Exxon-Valdez, and has nothing to do with the federal drilling permits he recently applied for on Statue of Liberty Island. (His recent $30 million contribution to the Hunt Journalists 4 Sport PAC is also unrelated.)

This is the most consequential election of our lifetimes. One candidate is a moral trainwreck who can barely string two sentences together. The other had a boundary-breaking, decades-long career in public service. One is a convicted felon with pending espionage charges. The other looks and behaves normally in public settings.

But we’ll never say which one is which.