1. Enjoy the Bagels, Dammit.
Last night, Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton fired Scott Pelley. This is good news. I’ll explain why in a minute, but first, I want to tell you a story.
Once upon a time there was an Intellectual Dark Web of thinkers and academics who had to operate below the surface of public discourse because their ideas were so dangerous and shocking. Bari Weiss made her career by fawning over them in the pages of the New York Times.
Among the maxims championed by Weiss and her IDW friends was the idea that “free speech is under siege.”
Weiss partnered with free-speech maximalist Elon Musk to expose the supposedly bad things liberals and the management of Twitter had conspired to do regarding free expression. She didn’t find much, though she did discover in the end that Musk himself was no champion of free speech. Bizarrely, she shrugged off this discovery with a single post and quickly moved on.1
Next, Weiss partnered with some different tech billionaires to establish a fake college called the “University of Austin,” which would teach “forbidden courses” to students brave enough to explore “heterodox” ideas.
This hasn’t worked either, as evinced by the track record of UATX banishing people who disagree with, ahem, certain ideas.2
Finally, Weiss ascended to control of CBS News. As she took over the division she sent a memo to all hands explaining what sort of journalism she wanted.
Then, when Scott Pelley said—civilly, without yelling or cursing—factually true things, fearlessly, plainly during a meeting with Weiss’s new minion, Nick Bilton, she fired Pelley.
Now we get to the part where I explain why this is good.