For over 70 years the Orange County Register was more than a local daily newspaper for the vast suburban sprawl that grew up around Santa Ana. It was also one of the key right-wing news outlets in California, espousing a version of libertarianism that was a thinly veiled intellectualization of anti-union, anti-worker, “profit is awesome” attitudes that made it rather clear that in the eyes of Freedom Communications, what was good for business was good for America.

Their editorials, especially over the last 30 years, consistently argued against government and for the private sector. Didn’t matter if the private sector failed where government succeeded – the Register zealously followed its anti-public, anti-democratic imperatives no matter where it led them (except when they had to suspend those ideals to support this or that Republican).

So it is hard, oh so very hard, to resist my inner Nelson Muntz when I read that Freedom Communications, publisher of the OC Register, is about to go bankrupt:

Freedom Communications, owner of The Orange County Register and 30 other daily newspapers, is expected to file for bankruptcy this week under a plan that will hand its publications to its lenders, people briefed on the matter said on Sunday.

A filing by Freedom, which could be made as soon as Tuesday, would be the latest by a newspaper publisher, as the industry struggles to cope with declining advertising revenue and heavy debt loads.

Obviously this does not yet mean the end of the Register, although things have been looking grim at 625 N. Grand Avenue for some time. And any schadenfreude is tempered by the fact that it will likely be the workers and beat reporters at the Register, many of whom do not at all share the publishers’ wingnuttery, who will suffer the most.

And yet it is hard to resist pointing out the incredible irony of a publication dedicated to the exaltation of the free market so completely and utterly failing to actually survive in that free market. Especially when, as the Wall Street Journal notes, the folks who would be wiped out by a bankruptcy filing are the wealthy members of the Hoiles family:

The Hoiles family has been divided for years about what to do with the Irvine, Calif., company. Family members representing about one half of the Hoiles clan sold their stake in the company as part of the recapitalization more than five years ago. The stake of the remaining half likely would be wiped out by a bankruptcy filing….

Struggling with its debt, Freedom about a year ago suspended its dividend, which was the primary source of income for members of the family’s fourth generation, many of whom don’t have jobs….

“Nobody is going to be destitute,” said one family member. But the filing is bound to force some family members to work, said people close to the situation.

Unless you spent the first 20 years of your life reading their editorials about how people who don’t work and collect welfare are cheats suckling off the teat of the hard-working middle-class man, you may not quite realize just how stunningly hypocritical – and therefore entirely unsurprising – it is that the Hoiles family is now going to have to work for a living.

As Atrios, who did a fair amount of time in the OC himself, put it earlier tonight:

Not cheering on the death of newspapers, cheering on the death of newspapers owned by glibertarian assholes.

At least the Register had the decency to survive long enough to devote an entire lead editorial to attacking me, which was one of the most important pieces of validation I have ever received.

Besides, who needs the Register when you have the OC Progressive?!