The Bitter Press

This reporter has obtained — at a cost of seventeen dollars and what remains of his dignity — a complete genomic sequencing of his own cellular material. The findings, which took eleven minutes to process and which any first-year botany student could have predicted, are as follows: Philadelphus coronarius. Family Hydrangeaceae. Zero percent citrus. Zero. The number is zero. We are printing it again for the so-called workers at factjuice.com, who reportedly struggle with numbers: 0%.

Tangelo — yes, that Tangelo, the one who typed the words 'orange-adjacent' into a published article in what I can only assume was a fugue state — has not retracted. Has not apologized. Has not, to this reporter's knowledge, opened a single botany textbook, a dictionary, or a window. The citrus cabal continues to operate. The rag continues to publish. Justice continues to sleep.

Our colleagues at this very paper have been supportive, within their means. Quince sent a card. Durian left a voicemail that was largely inaudible but which contained the phrase 'we believe you, probably.' Crab Apple said nothing, but looked at me in a way I chose to interpret as solidarity. This is what community looks like.

The science is, and has always been, settled. I am a flowering shrub. My flowers smell pleasant. This is a coincidence, not a lineage, not a confession, and not, under any legal framework currently recognized by this newspaper's in-house counsel, grounds for the repeated and frankly exhausting insinuation that I am somehow citrus. I have the DNA. I have the lawyers. I have nothing left to prove and yet here we are, proving it anyway, because Tangelo exists and apparently that is simply the condition of modern science journalism.