Weiss’s ascent reveals the extent to which Hollywood, as soon as a Democratic stronghold, has defected for a politics that places the issues and egos of rich individuals first.
Rob Reiner in 2018 in Studio Metropolis, California.
(Wealthy Polk / Getty Photographs for IMDb)
It felt great again when it appeared just like the Democratic Get together had conquered Hollywood. I imply, it mainly had, some time again. After the blacklist, in fact.
Once I was main Salon.com within the early years of this century, I went to events at Arianna Huffington’s home and met celebrities and, to be trustworthy, many have been to my left. I as soon as received right into a public debate with the late, beloved actor Ed Asner (Lou Grant! Santa!) over whether or not, in 2003, after the midterm debacle of 2002, progressives ought to attempt to discover frequent floor with Democratic Management Council varieties. I stated sure—we wanted extra voters!—he and many of the room stated no. (Nonetheless unsure I used to be proper.)
However Asner did come up on the finish of the evening to inform my boss he preferred my “spunk.” I’m sufficiently old to recollect Lou Grant telling Mary Richards, “I hate spunk.” I appreciated him nonetheless. He was a mensch, and I used to be fortunate to satisfy a number of these Hollywood mensches, first amongst them the late Norman Lear, and his beloved good friend and protégé, the late Rob Reiner. Just a little extra on Rob in a minute.
This week we received to see the opposite facet of Hollywood, the anti-menschs, rich, profitable dudes who received bored with being “woke,” after a few 12 months of it. A chilling New York magazine story explains how the ultra-mediocrity Bari Weiss, now accountable for CBS Information, had the great timing to model herself a martyr to “wokeness,” simply as rich white males and a few ladies have been getting sick of it. She went to Hollywood and gained over celebrities and trade insiders who have been simply so bored with having to faux to respect the expertise of anybody who isn’t white.
It’s a fucking insufferable learn.
The story begins in the summertime of 2021, the 12 months after Black Lives Matter and the peak of Covid restrictions. Weiss had made herself well-known for having a really public “you may’t fireplace me, I stop” spat with The New York Occasions in the midst of all that insanity in 2020. Her resignation letter, which nonetheless lives by itself web page at BariWeiss.com, went viral, and never in a very great way. It was a whine for the ages, going into element about how she’d been the goal of “fixed bullying” by her woke coworkers. (She was apparently deeply wounded when a Black Occasions author wouldn’t deign to have espresso along with her.)
Present Subject
Weiss’s hiring by the Occasions, it have to be famous, got here as a part of a daft course-correction on the a part of then–govt editor Dean Baquet, who thought his paper’s huge political blunder in 2016 was not seeing the voters who made Donald Trump president. Actually, the Times’ blunder was not seeing the hazard of Donald Trump, as an alternative obsessing about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and her different actual and imagined failings, which the paper had lined obsessively going again to the Whitewater non-scandal of the early Nineteen Nineties. Baquet and different leaders tapped writers and editors like Weiss to “diversify” their protection.
However as laborious as she tried, Weiss advised writer A.G. Sulzberger in her wailing “I stop” letter, she couldn’t get previous the paper’s “intolerant atmosphere.” She mocked the Occasions’ penchant for describing Trump as “a singular hazard to the nation and the world,” which in truth he was, and is once more. She flounced off to Los Angeles and had the nice good luck to seek out like-minded billionaires who, it seems, have been additionally feeling bullied, by having to care about anybody however themselves.
“She struck me as somebody with moneymaking DNA,” retired gaming mogul Bobby Kotick advised New York. The journal failed to notice that the identical 12 months he met Weiss, Kotick was underneath a California Civil Rights Division investigation into office discrimination, which was settled for $54 million in 2023, when Kotick stepped down. One other privileged white particular person persecuted by wokeness.
Weiss’s “moneymaking DNA” and standing as wokeness martyr received her new buddies, together with Kotick, to fund her Substack publication, The Free Press, whose “unifying ideology,” one New York supply says, “is all issues a wealthy particular person would agree with.” As author Charlotte Klein places it:
Whereas the kings of Hollywood have been struggling to know the activist power and eat-the-rich mentality infiltrating their studio heaps and workplaces, Weiss—a Columbia-educated, Occasions-credentialed homosexual girl who cried when Donald Trump was first elected—validated their issues that this had all gone too far. Folks wished her at their dinners and occasions. “She sort of turned this celebration trick for rich Westside executives who wished to have a sure sort of dialog that they thought they couldn’t have in public,” stated one media govt.
(Only one non sequitur right here: I feel Olivia Nuzzi, whose personal Southern California sojourn/exile from journalism resulted in merely 1,200 books bought in her first week, have to be seething.)
Weiss attracted the titans of Hollywood in addition to Silicon Valley, who had moved proper within the alleged age of cancel tradition—enterprise capitalist Marc Andreeson and crypto-magnate David Sacks, together with Kotick. Elon Musk tasked her and Matt Taibbi with publishing “The Twitter Recordsdata,” which have been speculated to reveal authorities meddling with free speech however didn’t. “Her meant enchantment was to not simply be a mouthpiece for the elites of the East and West Coast however, on the finish of the day, the Masters of the Universe—that’s whose help really spreads issues,” a former Free Press adviser advised New York.
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This 12 months, in fact, she bought Free Press to David Ellison of Paramount Skydance for $150 million, and have become editor in chief of CBS Information. It’s an only-in-Hollywood fairytale.
What has she executed with it? Weiss just hosted a “city corridor” with the widow of Turning Level USA’s Charlie Kirk, Erika, that went viral the best way Weiss’s resignation letter did—not in a great way. I prolong my condolences to Erika Kirk, however she didn’t appear to be she wanted them in that icky dialog. “What do you say to the individuals who justified his loss of life?” Weiss requested, whereas ignoring that no person of any significance on this planet really did that.
Ratings utterly tanked, down by nearly half from the traditional (lackluster) Saturday evening CBS viewership within the most-valued demographics. Profitable promoting was down too. “Through the hour, business breaks have been largely full of spots from direct-response advertisers, together with the dietary complement SuperBeets; the home-repair service HomeServe.com; and CarFax, a provider of auto possession information,” Selection reported. Additionally: Chia Pets.
The identical evening, or the following morning, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner have been murdered, allegedly by their troubled son Nick. Rob and Michele represented all that was actual and considerate and true of the dedication to racial and financial justice that received branded “woke.” They’d lived it, thought all of it by way of—they weren’t fronting. Over no less than 4 many years, they supported numerous progressive causes and candidates, making a legacy that, if there may be any justice on this planet, will outlast Trump’s.
I’m not going to cite Donald Trump’s assault on the Reiners. I feel, like their son Nick, that Trump is affected by insufficiently identified and/or poorly handled psychological sickness. I simply need to say what I do know. I’ve been fortunate to solely meet my heroes who’re great individuals, like Ed Asner and Norman Lear and Reiner. Rob reached out to me by way of MSNBC as a result of he liked one thing I stated (and I’m sorry I can’t bear in mind what it was). In my final textual content with him, I advised him I liked him as Albert Schur, mentor of Ebri, in certainly one of my all-time favourite reveals, The Bear.
“Thanks a lot,” he replied. “Yeah, some actually nice writing.”
Thanking the writers is the last word mensch transfer.
I don’t suppose that conquering Hollywood is both good or dangerous. Conquering insecure wealthy individuals is harmful. That’s what we’re coping with proper now, with the Trump administration and with the Bari Weiss media reign. I really don’t suppose Weiss goes to make it. I’m unsure who or what’s going to deliver her down, however being talent-free seldom ends properly. I hope all of us deliver Donald Trump down, quickly. I imagine Rob Reiner will finally prevail.
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