The NYT's Mean Girl Cope Over Bari Weiss and CBS

That's come cope.

Whenever the legacy media is caught with its pants down, we never get the mea culpa we so desperately desire. Wouldn’t it be great if they just said, 'Yeah, we screwed up'? But they never do. It’s always met with a sneer, a sour grapes reaction to those brave enough to tell the truth about once-trusted news outlets.

Whether it’s NPR after Uri Berliner exposed what all of us who stopped listening a long time ago already knew, or now, the New York Times.

Here is how the author of the piece, Jessica Testa, covers Bari Weiss’s exit from the New York Times:

In its nearly 100 years, CBS has not seen a leader quite like Ms. Weiss. Neither has the media industry. Ms. Weiss, 41, has ascended the mountain of journalism on a slingshot. In 2020, she publicly resigned as an opinion writer and editor at The New York Times to start a newsletter on Substack. Today, she has one of the most prestigious jobs in news.

Oh, is that what happened? She publicly resigned? I think there is a little more to the story, Ms. Testa. You know, that whole thing about how the New York Times lost its mind one night because of a massive Twitter hissy fit? Any of that ring a bell?

She then writes:

She achieved this without climbing the typical journalistic career ladder, and with no experience directing television coverage. She is richer in social clout than in Emmys or Pulitzers. And she is known more for wanting to rid the world of so-called wokeness than for promoting journalistic traditions. While newsroom leaders do not traditionally trumpet their personal beliefs, Ms. Weiss has described herself as a “left-leaning centrist,” a “radical centrist,” “a gay woman who is moderately pro-choice” — she is married to Nellie Bowles, a former Times reporter who is a co-founder of The Free Press — and a proud recipient of the label “Zionist fanatic.”

I laughed out loud reading the line, “newsroom leaders do not traditionally trumpet their personal beliefs.” They don’t? Since when? As far as I can tell, all of the major legacy news outlets have done nothing BUT trumpet their personal beliefs.

And let’s not forget this line, “And she is known more for wanting to rid the world of so-called wokeness than for promoting journalistic traditions.”

So-called wokeness? You mean it hasn’t gutted American culture and transformed it into cult-like, identity-obsessed dogma with pregnant men, chest-feeders, DEI mandates, sensitivity readers, and intimacy coordinators? Emptied out the box office, crushed television ratings, and sent voters fleeing the Democratic Party like rats off a sinking ship?

That’s the way Jessica Testa believes Bari Weiss “won,” by defeating “so-called wokeness,” and that, along with her billionaire pals, landed her a job at CBS News. That is what I call an act of bad journalism, Ms. Testa, because you left out the best part of the story: the truth.

Let me clear up a few things. What just happened with Bari Weiss and CBS News is what you call rounding the bases after a grand slam, or I guess you could call it a pie in the face for the New York Times.

Writing a sneering column — yet another — that continues the same brand of mean girl bullying of Weiss that drove her out of the paper to begin with—lesson still not learned.

Speaking of so-called woke, ever hear the one about Senator Tom Cotton being asked to write an op-ed that backed up with a majority of Americans believed, that if the violent riots and protests could not be controlled, we should “send in the troops”? Oh, that was quite the story.

That was the night we all found out that screeching so-called woke staffers and angry Democrats on Twitter had the Grey Lady by the balls. I am not misgendering her, him, whatever. It was bad, Ms. Testa. The Grey Lady crumpled.

It was the night my faith in the New York Times collapsed. I wasn’t getting the truth, I realized. I was in a bubble, and so was the Times. They were being led around by so-called woke staffers whose so-called woke education has made them too fragile to function in a newsroom. An op-ed put Black bodies at risk!

Even now, the evidence is laid bare - the cringeworthy apology to readers for the words by Tom Cotton that were HARM:

They all took to Twitter in a so-called woke rallying cry.

At least Bari Weiss knows that there is no such thing as “so-called” woke. She knows your paper would not dare touch the most controversial issues of our time, those that the majority of Americans are worried about, like the transgender contagion, like the “white fragility” psychosis. She realized all of you had abandoned the American people, and that left a vacuum she knew she could fill.

This should be the moment when the New York Times admits it made a mistake in letting her go, in not standing behind her after that op-ed was published, in not telling the brats in the newsroom or on Twitter to pound sand. But of course, they have to save face, and Ms. Testa gives them that opportunity to LARP their way through another embarrassment one more time.

Do I always read the Free Press? No. Do I agree with all of it? No. At least I read it more often than I read the New York Times because every so often, they post a story that is fearless and of interest to me. Her letter to the staffers at CBS went as follows:

I have no idea what that will be in practice. I hope it will be better than what passes for 60 Minutes and Sunday Morning now. My mother watches these shows, and I can tell just by talking to her that she has no idea what is going on in this country. That has to change. Maybe this will be the start.

If all Bari Weiss does at CBS News is offer a fair perspective from the Right or from MAGA, she will have helped to heal this divided country. What we need from our media is to humanize the half of the country they’ve thrown away like human garbage. Maybe Bari Weiss can do that. I hope so.

Ms. Testa and writers like her belong to the past, a world many of us are leaving behind. This is a Fourth Turning, after all, and when it’s over, nothing will be the same.