KIRIAKOU: “The Israelis have always spied on the United States.”
THEO: “Do we spy on them also?”
KIRIAKOU: “No, that's written in stone at the CIA.”
THEO: “Why can't we spy on them?”
KIRIAKOU: “It's a political decision that's been made in the White House.”
This show should get back to its roots and only talk to random normies. (And the occasional up-and-coming comic.) It feels kind of hokey recasting celebrities on managed press tours as man-on-the-street ornery subway riders.
This is a nice little thread about the a Scott Pelley thing, but it really drops the ball on Bari's real history of rampant cancellations. This is not a new thing she weaponized as soon as she got the power to; it has been the MO of her public life before her career even began.
Bari Weiss built her entire public identity on the proposition that cancel culture was destroying American discourse. She wrote about it. She founded a publication around it. She championed the Intellectual Dark Web as brave thinkers being silenced for saying forbidden things.
Scott Pelley said factually true things, without yelling, without cursing, without threatening anyone, in a staff meeting. He said Bilton had slender qualifications. He said Weiss was murdering 60 Minutes. He said these things because they are true and because saying true things in rooms where powerful people prefer comfortable silence is - per Weiss's own stated philosophy - exactly what journalists are supposed to do.
She fired him.
JVL names what this exposes precisely. They never wanted to end cancel culture. They wanted to control it. Some forbidden ideas - the ones MAGA likes - must be protected and platformed. Other ideas - the ones Bari Weiss dislikes - are genuinely verboten. Say them out loud and you lose your job.
The Pentagon press office is now classified. Tim Miller was threatened with FARA for sharing a public news report. Comey is being prosecuted for seashells on a beach. The federal workforce faces proposed NDAs. Pelley was fired for refusing instructions to broadcast unverified assertions and then saying so in a meeting.
The through line is not chaos. It is a consistent, documented project to determine who gets to speak, about what, to whom, and under whose authority. Cancel culture was never the target. It was always the tactic. Weiss just proved it by doing the thing she built her career opposing, the moment she had the power to do it.
So all of you guys who were in my comments last month talking about how food assistance should not include candy and soda but actual healthy foods, I suppose you’re going to call your members of Congress and the White House about this?
@constans Probably my most ironclad opinion about the modern age of content is that the binge model is terrible. I don't know of a single thing that benefits from it versus a weekly release. I'm binging the boys right now and I feel like it's a worse experience than if I had watched it