Hey, you! Would you like to feel complete and utter despair? Do you long for the sense of hopelessness that comes with knowing, for certain, that the televised media capitulation to Donald Trump is all but complete? Well, do I have a treat for you! Because The New York Times Magazine sent Jonathan Mahler to profile CNN head and former Trump colleague Jeff Zucker. Mahler deftly allowed this human potato to expose himself as the cynical, chummy, utterly vacant ratings merchant that you always knew he was. It is a truly horrifying read, and it goes a good way to explaining why we are so irretrievably screwed. Let’s get into the fine details:

Zucker is a big sports fan, and from the early days of the campaign had spoken at editorial meetings about wanting to incorporate elements of ESPN’s programming into CNN’s election coverage. “The idea that politics is sport is undeniable, and we understood that and approached it that way,” he told me.

No. Politics is NOT sports. I know that’s the preferred analogy of every insufferable, self-described political junkie who wants to believe that House of Cards is a documentary. But it's important to repeat: Politics is not sports. Sports is programmed entertainment with clear outcomes based off inviolable rules. Politics is the social and procedural physics—often very dull—that determine how this country operates. To alchemically convert politics into sports, you have to dumb them down to a point where all nuance and meaning is lost—which is exactly what Jeff Zucker has done. Zucker has built CNN on the premise that the news can be First Take, but instead of arguing about whether or not Tony Romo was elite, the talking heads argue about whether women have a right to birth control.

Van Jones told me that he thinks (Jeffrey) Lord has played a valuable role at CNN, helping its viewers understand the Trump phenomenon. “He’s a Trump translator, really, for the whole country,” Jones said.

If that's the truth, then maybe Van Jones is no better than Lord, or any other opportunist whose worldview has been thoroughly distorted by a paycheck from CNN. Jeffrey Lord is a liar and a racist, and is only on television because people like Jeff Zucker want you to believe that lying and racism are crucial vantage points in exploring any particular issue. That Van Jones, purveyor of the Love Army rhetoric, would buy in to any of that, at least publicly, is both confusing (for us) and embarrassing. It plays into the long-futile need for Democrats to cater to their enemies more than they cater to their own constituents.