Fonts rarely make headlines.
I’m typing this column in Calibri just to see if I end up on a no fly list. It’s a sans serif typeface that is easy on my bad eyes. But if Marco Rubio was in my office, he’d glance at my screen and accuse me of woke kerning or DEI X-height.
Reuters: “Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri.”
Font coup? Isn’t this guy the U.S. secretary of state and acting national security adviser and acting administrator of USAID and acting archivist of the United States and a farmers market vendor who keeps trying to sell his soul?
How does he have time for Helvetica or Palatino?
From the story: “Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor Antony Blinken’s decision to adopt Calibri a ‘wasteful’ diversity move …”
I got nothing against Times New Roman. If it’s good enough for court transcripts and breakup letters, that’s a flexible font. What I don’t get is this obsession with “woke” that animates the sinister clowns and trapeze grifters doing performative backflips under the big tent of Trump 2.0.
But here we are. These lunatics are even coming for the weather. God help a meteorologist who accidentally blurts out “vulnerable community” or “climate change.” That kind of “social justice forecasting” will get you fired faster than the Alberta Clipper is now dumping snow outside my office window.
Pronouns in your email signature? Virtue signalling! Stick figures on bathroom signs? Gender indoctrination! Pentagon PowerPoints with pastel hues? Warriors won’t commit war crimes and murder unidentified seamen in the Caribbean after seeing a lemon chiffon slide!
The culture wars have a new font/front: graphic design. It’s liberal sans serif versus conservative serif. It’s blue clip-art versus red clip-art. Is Arial communist? Is Century Gothic favoured by Antifa? Will Tunga make your child trans?
Rubio wants Times New Roman to help “restore decorum and professionalism.”
That ship has sailed and the nautical chart is festooned with wingdings.
Forget about fonts. It’s the cruelty of this administration that should be underlined in bold. Health care will soon be too expensive for millions. Masked thugs in unmarked vans continue to snatch anyone off the streets who looks like an extra in a Telenovela.
This White House has betrayed allies and tickled dictators. It has placed an atomic bomb under the global economy. It has pardoned hundreds of criminals. It has weaponized the justice system against political enemies. It has sent consumer prices skyrocketing.
It has rolled back regulations that will kick average mortality in the nutsack.
Dear Leader wants a new ballroom and everyone else can ration Spam.
Instead of a cabinet front-loaded with experienced pros who have command of their portfolios, you’ve got SecDef Pete “Jack Daniels” Hegseth bastardizing Franklin the Turtle. You’ve got Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem cosplaying as an anti-immigrant Maleficent who flies around in private planes with a personal Botox doc and costumes from ’80s hair metal videos.
RFK Jr. is determined to make measles great again. Next up: polio! But first, a chin-up contest inside an airport against Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the fellow who believes he can usher in a “golden age of travel” if the airport hordes would stop dressing like slobs already.
Ditch the track pants and sneakers. Remember to wear Gucci as your flight is delayed for 10 hours due to a lack of air traffic controllers.
You know why the State Department switched to Calibri in 2023? Because it was deemed a more accessible font for those with visual disabilities. It has a lower stroke contrast and wider spacing. Serifs can blur and clutter in lower resolution.
This was a tiny inclusive act that probably cost about 45 bucks. Anthony Blinken didn’t pull the trigger because he thought Times New Roman was too QAnon.
That’s what this font coup is really about. To Trump 2.0, helping anyone who needs help is a sign of weakness. Kindness is a red line. Accessibility? That’s just ideology. Dyslexia shyslexia. When progress is the enemy, even fonts are divided into political tribes and armed with jagged apostrophes.
Let the typographical purge begin with Calibri as Noem sticks with Comic Sans.
The voices who once railed against identity politics slipped into the power chamber and are now railing against the identity of road signs, bathroom pictograms and email signatures. Instead of debating policies, they are auditing templates. Instead of trying to elevate the discourse, they are writing all-caps screeds in Britannic.
Future historians will need spreadsheets to untangle the chaos of this era. They will read the ancient philosophers to grasp how one lying narcissist could inflict so many body blows to democracy and the rule of law.
They will refer to 2025 as the Year of Madness.
And they will write their books in Calibri.
