When The Fat Gray Lady Sings
[Writer’s Note: This was originally posted on my website on 7/15/2020. There is a full podcast in video and audio format covering this article.]
As many of you have seen by now, Bari Weiss has resigned from The New York Times. A ton of Right-wing websites have picked this up as another black eye on the face of the mainstream media, and I really did not think I had anything to add to the conversation, but while researching some of the claims made by Bari Weiss in her now infamous resignation letter, I find her resignation to be much more than the latest casualty of a corrupt culture.
Bari Weiss is, or was, a staff writer and editor of the Opinion section of The New York Times. According to her bio, she was an op-ed editor at the Wall Street Journal and senior editor at Tablet before she went to The New York Times. She would be considered center-right politically by most, but often appears on shows like The View, Morning Joe, and Bill Maher.
Bari released a resignation letter on her website yesterday making it clear why she resigned. She first stated why she came to The New York Times three years ago writing, “the paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers,” and she joined to help them “redress that critical shortcoming.” But that is not easy to do this in a mainstream newspaper.
We have all seen and read some of the more popular pieces in The New York Times, most notably the 1619 Project that goes through a bit of revisionist history, gets torched by historians, and then author Nikole Hannah-Jones gets a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her trouble. Bari cites a few other examples of The New York Times ridiculous standards when it comes to real journalism and commentary including the Cheryl Strayed interview with author Alice Walker who, according to Weiss, is a “proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati,” and a piece about how the Soviet Union “often emphasized the sexism and racism of its capitalist opponents” when talking about the Soviet space program. These pieces are okay, which they should be, but Senator Tom Cotton cannot write an op-ed about how to control violent riots without The New York Times issuing an editor’s note almost as long as the article itself stating, “[a]fter publication, this essay met strong criticism from many readers (and many Times colleagues), prompting editors to review the piece and the editing process. Based on that review, we have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.”
Why the insanity you ask? Bari brilliantly explains why.
“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.”
Nail, meet head.
This is the kind of exposure of the mainstream media and ‘trusted’ news publications we need. Even though popular New York Times op-ed columnist Charles M. Blow made his opinion known via Twitter declaring “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CANCEL CULTURE,” papers like The New York Times are at the forefront of the phenomenon. This complete rejection will only serve to damage the cause these papers claim to fight for, truth.
Bari Weiss is one of the many voices rejected by the culture at-large just for having thoughts independent from the only acceptable narrative of progressivism. Progress is great if we are progressing in the right direction. Creating a culture that claims to be so tolerate that they shut down all opposition who they deem as intolerant is how we breed mass corruption. Corruption is not something inherent in politics, it is something inherent in us. The first step in turning around a corrupt culture is exposing it.
You know what they say, “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” The Gray Lady has become fat and corrupt, and we can only hope she has a decent singing voice.
P.S. If you are still reading, and I hope you are, I will be republishing my writing from my website on Medium so there may be some older stories I cover, although I do not often cover current events. I shut down my website because I have changed my main resource of communication and content hosting to Locals.com. Although I will be publishing my long-form written content on Medium, you can find my more regular content, podcasts, and interactive community at engineeringpolitics.locals.com. Please feel free to join this growing community if you want to stay up to date and/or support this content. Thank you for your consideration!
Note: None of the persons, podcasts, or books referenced above reflect my ideas and personal beliefs, nor should they be held accountable for anything published on this site in the future.
