I feel the same as Harvard’s Steven Pinker. … W Reader sent me the Times of London link with the following note: “I had to read this Pinker interview twice to understand it, but I am glad that I did. It explains a lot about our crazy seeming world.” … And I loved this quote from the centrist Pinker, on whether right-wing or left-wing authoritarianism is the greater threat: “Trump has an army … whereas the Department of Romance Languages — there’s only so much damage they can do.”
Month: October 2025
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Join the club: ‘I’m pinned between cancel culture and Trump’
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Bari Weiss cashes out — and ideologically shakes it up
In a reference to a friend’s email about Bari Weiss selling her Free Press website to Paramount (“we’ll see how this goes”), I responded: “I don’t see this turning out well. These types of corporate takeovers of small shops rarely do. Look what happened to Huffington Post and Business Insider, etc. Bari Weiss is cashing out. That’s the bottom line.” … And Huff Post and BI were indeed never the same after co-founders Ariana Huffington and Henry Blodget, respectively, disengaged from the businesses. I assume the same will happen to The Free Press. I’d add that The Free Press sale comes at a time when, at least in my opinion, the website was getting rather stale. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I had gotten tired of its predictability. …
But I and most others are more intrigued with Paramount’s appointment of Weiss as the new editor in chief of CBS News. This is a deliberate ideological shakeup at CBS, perhaps/probably as a wink-wink side deal with the Trump administration. It’s obviously an attempt to break up the “liberal media,” as both Weiss and Trump see it from slightly different angles. Weiss is no MAGA groupie, but she is vehemently anti-woke. And that will be her personal and probable corporate mission: to wring out any sign of DEI-ism at CBS News.
Fyi: The NYT has a good piece on the journalistic oddity of her CBS appointment, considering she’s never worked in television. I’d add she’s from the opinion-page side of journalism, not the grunt-reporting side of journalism, a distinction that many grunts at CBS will note and deeply resent, guaranteed.
Update – 10.8.25 – From Holman Jenkins at the WSJ: “CBS Deal Smells Like a Gimmick” (and subhead: “An aspiring mogul finds yet another way to appease Donald Trump”).
Update II – 10.9.25 — From the Atlantic: “Bari Weiss Still Thinks It’s 2020.” And its subhead: “She co-founded The Free Press as a bastion of liberalism in an illiberal time. Her arrival at CBS is paved with excuses for illiberal friends.”
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Free-speech: have they learned nothing on Nantucket?
Here we go again. Someone with the wrong views is about to get canceled in Massachusetts. It happened following Charlie Kirk’s murder, as the Globe reports. Now it’s happening on Nantucket, as the Globe also reports. Granted, Maxamillian Dutton’s religious opinions about women are pretty hard to take. But he apparently never brought those subjects up during a motivational speech at Nantucket High School. Doesn’t matter. Someone objected to his previous public statements. So the superintendent of Nantucket’s schools is establishing a “new committee to review speaker candidates to ensure ‘that their messaging, both professional and personal, aligns with NPS’s core values, vision, and mission.” … In other words, they’re developing a speech code aligned with the “school’s values of respect, inclusion, and equity.”
Amid the raging debate over free-speech across the county – and the hypocrisies of right-wing woke-ism and left-wing woke-ism – it seems they’ve learned absolutely nothing on Nantucket.
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‘Plaza-gate’: Is it a corruption or just plain incompetence?
Last week I casually urged an investigation of ‘Plaza-gate,’ as the Herald pundits are now calling it. But appealing to President Trump to investigate the highway-plaza controversy now engulfing MassDOT, as Howie Carr writes this morning? I think it’s safe to say Trump groupies would take a guilty-as-charged approach to any probe and merely unite the hacks on Beacon Hill. Then again, who else could investigate this mess? Andrea Campbell? … In case you’re wondering, here’s a good ‘BUR summary of Plaza-gate, which recently reached a new low when the “winning” highway plaza-redevelopment bidder suddenly dropped out of the project. …
My hunch is this is more about gross mismanagement than it is about outright corruption. It’s hard not to jump to that conclusion when you think of who’s running the show at DOT (“Has the state transportation secretary been benched?”— Globe. “Some believe Monica Tibbits-Nutt has lost her voice as transportation secretary. Can she find it again?” — Globe). … And, oh, Suffolk Construction is involved. Of course.
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Short takes: Another gubernatorial wannabe … Shaming? Really? … Romney’s wise advice … Zombie bad ideas … The fourth Markey option
— The business community sends forth yet another knight to lose to an incumbent: “Businessman and GOP donor Michael Minogue jumps into Mass. governor’s race” (WBUR)
— For most colleges, it’s going to get much worse before it gets better: “Berklee College lays off 70 employees” (UH)
— And even schools with $7.2 billion endowments are feeling the pinch: “Brown University lays off 48 employees as the institution faces millions in deficits” (MassLive)
— He forgot to mention democratic socialism, but otherwise this is a great piece by Jeff: “Why won’t zombie bad ideas stay buried?” (Globe)
— Really? Shaming? Is this the more aggressive resistance demanded by progressives?: “Democrats Use Empty House to Shame G.O.P. Ahead of Shutdown” (NYT)
— It’s going slowly because we’ve allowed our industrial capacity to become so depleted: “Pentagon Pushes to Double Missile Production for Potential China Conflict” (WSJ)
— One way or the other, we’re going to be paying for this empire building via higher premiums: “Mass General Brigham plans new inpatient tower at Brigham and Women’s” (BBJ)
— Romney’s wise advice that unfortunately went unheeded: “’We just can’t begin to be prosecuting political opponents’: Romney says he urged Biden administration to pardon Trump” (Globe)
— A fourth scenario is Markey graciously stepping aside, but that’s unlikely to happen: “Three scenarios. Three different winners. How Mass could have the nation’s most interesting Democratic primary next year” (Globe)
— This is encouraging: “AbbVie invests $70M in Worcester facility” (BBJ)
— It’s for partly noble and partly modern-collegiate selfish reasons: “Why is the Ivy League’s best player taking a year off from basketball?” (Washington Post)
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Trump’s strange meanderings: telling it like it is
I was going to write a post expressing alarm at President Trump’s “enemy within” speech to U.S. generals early this week. But then I read Eliot Cohen’s funny telling-it-like-it-is account of the president’s bizarre meanderings before 800 assembled generals and admirals. And I felt a little better. Cohen merely describes what he saw and heard – and it’s a wonderful read as it follows the president’s weird train-of-thought style of speaking. Have there been other historical figures who regularly spoke in this same at-length, unscripted style? Castro? Juan Peron? Huey Long? … Anyway, Cohen’s description of the hapless Pete Hegseth’s performance is equally funny and spot on. … Cohen piece via the Atlantic, btw.
Update — From Peggy Noonan at the WSJ: “The Embarrassing Pete Hegseth.”
Hub Blog 