As I reported before, Bari Weiss, former NYT columnist and then founder of The Free Press, has become Editor-in-Chief of CBS News as the Free Press has joined Paramount, which owns CBS. I was wary of this for one reason: how this might slant CBS News, though I never watch it anyway. The Free Press is heterodox and, most disturbingly, seems to be soft on religion. Will that infect CBS?
On Saturday night Weiss made her first appearance as a CBS news person, hosting a 45-minute “town hall meeting” with Erika Kirk, the widow of recently assassinated Charlie Kirk, head of the conservative organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA). I’ve put the video below.
It was not a propitious interview; in fact, it was pretty boring and repetitive. But that might have been because Erika Kirk seems to be a one-note person, devoted not only to dutifully following the principles of her husband, whom she idolized, but especially devoted to proselytizing about Jesus and God. For religion is one of the main pivots of both Kirk and TPUSA. (Kirk recently issued a book urging us all to rest on the Biblical Sabbath, called Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life.)
The format of this town hall will probably be the one Weiss uses in her future town halls, and she promises many of them. She interviews a subject, and then select members of the audience (an audience relevant to the speaker’s beliefs) ask questions. You can see the video below.
First, let me note that Kirk is entitled to her beliefs, though I don’t think Weiss did her any favors by allowing her to proselytize ad infinitum in the interview. Second, I do have immense sympathy for Ms. Kirk, who is left with two small children after her husband’s brutal assassination. And the joy and glee that came out when Kirk was killed was unseemly, and surely deeply hurtful to Erika. This is not a critique of Erika Kirk, but of the show itself. And I’ll add that though I think Kirk’s murder was abhorrent and reprehensible, I still disagreed with almost all of his political stands, stands instantiated in TPUSA.
What struck me most were two things: Kirk’s evasion of any questions that were “hard”, like one asking her if she condemned Trump’s violent political rhetoric or whether words could constitute violence. Her response was almost invariably to say that the Lord (aka Jesus) will take care of everything. For example, when she was asked whether she’d condemn Trump’s political rhetoric that was sometimes violent, she simply said that the problem was “so much deeper than just one person.” When asked to respond to Charlie’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act, she simply said that she was in favor of merit. (The Civil Rights Act was not “affirmative action” it was enacted to give blacks their Constitutional rights.)
The other issue was Kirk’s incessant proselytyzing. When asked why, she thought, God/Jesus allowed Kirk to be murdered, she said that it unleashed a big revival (I doubt it), that “the Lord is moving in ways we have no idea, and that God is going to use Charlie’s death to show the world something. Big. God, she thinks, will use the event to allow her “to bring glory to her and his kingdom.”
The father of a murdered Jewish person asks Erika about growing antisemitism on the Right, and will she condemn individuals spreading that hate? She responds simply that we all need the Lord and Saviour (she’s referring to Jesus, but the guy asking questions was a Jew). She adds, “You cannot separate the Old Testament from the New Testament,” but I doubt she believes that. Kirk himself, though a supporter of Israel, made several remarks that seem overtly antisemitic, and TPUSA is aligned heavily with the Christian right. You do not tout Jesus to Jews.
It is God and Jesus all the way down, and Weiss did not question the foundations of Kirk’s faith, which perhaps would have been an unfair question give Erika’s emotionality.
Kirk reiterates constantly the fact that Charlie only wanted to have conversations, but that’s a bit of dissimulation, for Charlie Kirk was firm in his right-wing ideology and I doubt the conversations would ever have changed his mind. I applaud the desire to have mutual, civil, and nonviolent exchanges of views, but those conversations should be conducted in a way that each person should be able to tell us what evidence would change their minds. Charlie would never change his mind, despite the fact that he sat behind tables with signs making provocative statements and adding . . . “Change my mind.”
To her credit, Weiss and others do try to ask some hard question, like how does she intend to take up Charlie’s mission while maintaining a family. (Answer: the Lord will help her do it, and, anyway TPUSA is not a job, but her family.) When asked how she was able to trust God in the “midst of unfair and immense suffering,” Erika cites the story of Job, who was made by God to suffer for no good reason, but in the end came out okay simply because Job prayed for his friends, which made the angry God change His mind. I have never understood the point of that story, but theologians have tied themselves in knots trying to interpret it in a way that puts God in a good light.
Kirk’s views are all summed up in her answer to Weiss’s question about how she met Charlie. Erika responds that the Lord helped her to find Charlie in a job interview, and Erika asked God if Charlie was the right guy. He was, for, as Erika says, “If I remain in the jetstream of God’s will, then he will provide for you.” And that’s pretty much her answer to every question in the town hall.
This was not a good first foray of Weiss into t.v. journalism, but surely things will improve as Weiss interviews people who don’t cling to superstition. But the goddiness of this show struck me as overbearing and unevidenced, and I hope religion is not a frequent “Town Hall Topic”.
One more note before I get to the video. Variety weighed in on the Town Hall, and not in a positive way; click to read:
The content:
During a Saturday-night town hall led by Bari Weiss, the recently named editor in chief of CBS News, most of Madison Avenue sought an off-ramp.
The program featured an in-depth interview with Erika Kirk, the CEO of the conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA and the widow of Charlie Kirk, the group’s former leader. He was assassinated during one of the organization’s events at Utah Valley University, throwing a harsh spotlight on the political and cultural divides present in the U.S.
The event marked a new offering from CBS News. The organization does not typically host town halls or debates on trending issues or with newsmakers. And the choice of Weiss as moderator also raised eyebrows, because in most modern TV-news organizations, senior editorial executives remain off camera, rather than appearing in front of it.
More may be on the way. During the program, Weiss told viewers that “CBS is going to have many more conversations like this in the weeks and months ahead, so stay tuned. More town halls. More debates. More talking about the things that matter.” That would suggest CBS is planning to devote more hours to the programs.
The news special aired at 8 p.m. on Saturday, one of the least-watched hours in broadcast TV. And that may have contributed to a relative dearth of top advertisers appearing to support the show. During the hour, commercial breaks were largely filled with spots from direct-response advertisers, including the dietary supplement SuperBeets; the home-repair service HomeServe.com; and CarFax, a supplier of auto ownership data. Viewers of the telecast on WCBS, CBS’ flagship station in New York, even saw a commercial for Chia Pet, the terra-cotta figure that sprouts plant life after a few weeks.
Did Ms. Weiss ask her about her views on gay marriage and gays adopting children?
Well, I listened to it only once, but I don’t think the subject came up. I may be wrong.
I believe Nellie gave birth to the children they have. (You can guess why I avoided “their children.”).
My FP subscription expires today, and yesterday I cancelled the renewal. I’m tired of having their gods pushed down my throat, tired of their puerile “A Man Ought to Know” articles, and tired of their commenters who seem to feel the FP is far too lefty. I shall miss Nellie’s TGIF, though.
Though it is not anti-Semitic to criticise the politics of George Soros and the ADL and similar. Let’s take the first quote in that link:
“Kirk claimed that Jewish philanthropy funding American universities was effectively “subsidising your own demise by supporting institutions that breed anti-Semites and endorse genocidal killers” ”
But it is true that the “Critical Race Theory” that now dominates swathes of academia does demonise white people, in which they include Jews, as “oppressors”. Since Oct 7, swathes of academia demonizes Israel (and Jews in general) as oppressors of the Palestinians. And it’s true that donors such as Soros have both supported and funded such ideologies.
Read Kirk’s Tweets that are supposedly so damning. E.g.: “1,000 Harvard Students standing in solidarity with Hamas. Jewish donors are finally realizing that they’ve spent decades subsidizing Jew hatred on campus. Jewish donors work their whole life, then give away massive sums to create activists who hate them.”
Even if one thinks this wrong or exagerated, I don’t see why it is “anti-Semitic”. It is pro-Semitic. Kirk is clearly against the hatred of Jews. Saying that some Jews have unwittingly given funding to institutions that have promoted such hatred is not “anti-Semitic”.
Or this: “Jews are some of the most generous funders of America’s universities, from Harvard to NYU to Stanford to Ohio State. Liberal Jews also donated massively to BLM. Wake up American Jews! Stop subsidizing your own demise by supporting institutions that breed Anti-Semites and endorse genocidal killers.” He’s clearly against anti-Semitism.
Or this, which is also supposedly damning: “The next month, Kirk defended Elon Musk on his show after the tech mogul responded “you have said the actual truth” to a user who had posted a reference to the “Great Replacement” theory, writing that Jews were “coming to the disturbing realization” that immigrants to the United States “don’t exactly like them too much.”.
Yes, and? Isn’t it true? Maybe today Australian Jews are “coming to the disturbing realization” that there are immigrants to Australia who “don’t exactly like them too much”. How is saying such things “anti-Semitic”?
How is it anti-Semitic to be against open borders and the mass migration into Western nations of multiple millions of Muslims, of which a significant fraction are rabidly anti-Semitic?
Yes, I erred. But I doubt that Kirk thinks that Jews would go to Heaven. I will cross out that sentence, tough, but leave it up.
Critical Race Theory doesn’t demonize white people, it points out how they have oppressed other people and how that has affected the course of US history. It can be presented in an overly simplified way that condemns Whites as a group, but that is the fault of some who use it for that purpose, not of the study itself.
To be fair, the 1619 Project was criticized by a number of historians for being too narrowly focused on slavery and the faults of certain historical figures, but it is not historically inaccurate.
It’s also inaccurate to claim that it dominates “swathes of academia”. This is a conservative talking point from those who want US history to be only positive and heroic, a point of view that TPUSA and the Trump administration are pushing. So any instructor who broaches messy history is labeled anti-American and anti-Semitic. TPUSA in particular goes after any instructor who even mentions concepts they deem unpatriotic and anti-religion, and makes their lives miserable. They are not in the least interested in open exchange of ideas.
“To be fair, the 1619 Project was criticized by a number of historians for being too narrowly focused on slavery and the faults of certain historical figures, but it is not historically inaccurate.” The critiques I read of the project came to a conclusion that differs from yours. Some statements from the project were quietly removed from the Times site because they were historically indefensible. For example the statement that the colonies rebelled because England was planning to ban slavery and the colonies wanted to preserve it. Or so I read at the time when a few well known American history professors, including some associated with the project, were criticizing some conclusions from the project.
No expert here, just an irritating loudmouth – but I believe 1619 was wildly wrong on many metrics. By real historians. And Ms. Hanna Nicole has been roundly discredited.
Consider how professionally, spectacularly wrong and bananas-left one’s hairbrained ideas have to be for the damned…. New York Times to recoil in horror. She’s the Augustine Fuentez of race. (sp.)
D.A.
NYC
Critical Race Theory — at least as it is taught and promulgated — says that if mean outcomes for a racial minority group are unfavourable then it can only be because of “systemic racism”, meaning they are being oppressed by whites, either as acting today, or as a legacy of past oppression. No other explanation is countenanced.
If an academic dissented and suggested a possible role for other factors, such as that group’s cultural attitudes or even differences in innate abilities, then they would quickly be an ex academic. If you don’t agree that this ideology dominates the relevant swathes of academia, please point me to academics who have indeed tried arguing those things and are still in post in a mainstream university.
Realise that merely lamenting that students admitted with lower grades for DEI reasons then tend to get lower grades is enough to get you fired. Merely nodding along to such a statement (rather than instantly denouncing it) is also enough to get you fired.
“CRT doesn’t hate Whites; it’s people who hate Whites” sounds a lot like something else, something you strongly disagree with; right?
You say the 1619 Project was not historically inaccurate, while in the same breath referencing the historians (dean of American Revolution history Gordon Wood, dean of Civil War history James McPherson, among others) who specifically took issue with the central claims made by the project as deeply inaccurate. For example, the project claims the American Revolution was fought by colonists to preserve slavery. This is a historical inaccuracy, which will find (incorrect) support from Woody Holton and no other historian of the era.
Go ahead and read Holton’s “Forced Founders” and try to follow his sourcing to the ground. He digs up mere anger at the British governor Dunmore attempting to use the Virginian’s slaves against them…in 1775, when the Revolution was already well underway as Mary Beth Norton’s new book 1774, demonstrates further.
I suspect Bari is quite aware of certain Evangelical misgivings about Jews, but does not want to give up on the greatest (non-Jewish) supporters Zionists like her have ever had. Netanyahu likewise.
How many Evangelicals are in the IDF?
Probably not many but without them US government support for Israel would crater. They’re politically important.
I Agree, but strongly suspect there are far more non-Jewish Arab Israelis in the IDF than there are US Evangelicals. And it’s the IDF that has always been the cornerstone of Israel’s continued existence. US support has been very helpful, sometimes critical; but given the current US general unreliability and fecklessness, Netanyahu would be a fool to bet the country’s future on it.
I stumbled across the interview while channel surfing, alighted for a few minutes, concluded that it was awful—too repetitive, too religious—and moved on to watch Air Disasters. That said, it’s just one interview. We’ll see how other interviews turn out. More importantly, it will be interesting to see how or whether CBS News changes with Weiss at the helm.
Oh I love Air Disasters, Norm! Great show!
Unsure about CBS, I haven’t watched an actual TV in a decade. It disappoints me, take it away.
🙂
best,
D.A.
NYC
ISTM there’s an appropriate metaphor here. A frequent factor in the air disasters is intentional or careless deviation from established protocols (during maintenance, training, checklists, comms, etc.) “It seemed like a good idea at the time” and/or “Oops” would be accurate epitaphs in many cases.
“Oops” is probably a universal epitaph. Imagined to be either said by the deceased, or by his doctors.
This is somewhat tangential, and probably more to do with my own peculiar perspective than anything else, but am I the only person who thinks that using words like “assassination” or, in other circumstances, “execution”, are almost sanitizing in the description of such horrible deeds–almost pseudo-cool in their character? My inclination (which is solely mine, perhaps) is just to use the word “murder”. Somehow it feels more true to the foulness of the deed, without any potential “fancy” connotations. It may just be my weird aesthetic sense at work here, though.
“Murder” is certainly an apt description, but when the victim is killed for political reasons, it seems that “assassination” is also a good term, as it connotes (at least to me) that the murder was more than an act of one individual against another. It implies that there is a political context. Same with “execution.” All three terms seem appropriate to me.
You aren’t alone, Robert. “Assassination” seems clinical, lacking that visceral punch of many of our words pulled from Old English. Moreover, it loses effect in its dilution. I’m curious how we started invoking it for the targeted murder of any prominent person—especially if executed in the public eye. John Lennon. Charlie Kirk. All the same today as Julius Caesar, Lincoln, and JFK. The sense of treacherous violence is dead. It’s the morbid side of “star” inflation.
I think you’re right, Robert. Murder is what it is. Assassination is too sanitizing on the one hand, as you say, and too broad in that it implies a politics-changing political motivation or consequence or both. President John F Kennedy and his brother Robert were assassinated (and also murdered of course) because both were sitting political leaders or candidates for office, and were murdered because of that. Lee Harvey Oswald, John Lennon, and Martin Luther King were “only” murdered. To call them assassinated is to engage in vicarious delusions of grandeur.
If one wants to say that King was assassinated, then one has to allow that Kirk was, too, but I don’t think it fits for either.
Execution is judicial killing of any common criminal. Completely inappropriate use here.
“Assassination” seems correct if you think Kirk was targeted for his views. (Which he probably was.)
As a former programming director, the Ericka Kirk interview was a bad call. Two reasons, first, Kirk has been all over conservative media starting from before her husband’s mass service. So, this interview was hardly exclusive or newsworthy. Second, this interview solidifies the untested belief that Weiss seeks to make CBS into Fox News.
However, if ratings are good, she’s right and I’m wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.
My own view is that it was deemed a timely interview, since the murder of C. Kirk is still recent and on peoples’ minds. Further, it had gone out to the viewership of one of our major broadcast channels, to be seen by people across the political spectrum.
So I saw it as checking boxes for both news value and marketing value.
The problem was that the interviewee is basically the widow of a Christian Mullah. You aren’t going to get anything other than religious talking points out of her.
Yes, Mark. We (all) must consider Bari isn’t anymore some upstart ex-NYT writer self-exiled from the Grey Lady, startin’ up the Free Press in the California sun.
She’s a big shot where clicks and.. now even Neilson Ratings (remember them?) are her main metric.
I say this without critique or judgement.
I’m lucky I don’t care much how many people read my column, but I’m not my editors who – like Bari – have to think about clicks and shareholders first, as she does now.
And I’m not a huge fan personally, but I’ll venture she has made the transition …pretty well.
D.A.
NYC
It was unwise of Weiss to interview Mrs. Kirk in this manner. Weiss couldn’t ask her overly tough questions or challenge anything she said without appearing callous, which allowed Mrs. Kirk free rein to promote her religious views and TPUSA philosophy.
This does not reflect well on Weiss’ journalistic abilities or leadership.
Excellent point.
It’s a money/power grab, and Weiss is hoping to capitalize before the shit-show implodes or moves on. Who gets to be the next Rush Limbaugh, the next dominating conservative conspiracy influencer? It’s a grab-bag at the moment and there’s million$ for whoever can wrangle it. Will it be Kirk & TPUSA with JD Vance in tow? Tucker Carlson & Nick Fuentes? Candace Owens? What’s the Bannon & Stone angle? Of course, MAGA is the source of their power but it’s splintering…how long can it hold? Trump no longer cares about MAGA…he’s aged, bored and tired. Remember, he only wanted to regain the Presidency for jail evasion and then lucre. Mission accomplished. Can someone harness the scraps of the MAGA movement Trump has created? Can CBS outfox FOX?
The show must go on, there’s money on the table!
“Her response was almost invariably to say that the Lord (aka Jesus) will take care of everything.” Ms. Kirk no doubt ascribes the convenient appearance of light after she presses a switch to “the Lord” rather than to the modern electrical system etc.. The fundamentalist Christian outlook mimics the occasionalism that killed the development of science in the Islamic world: the lazy view that everything is simply due to the will of Allah, and therefore it is pointless (and impious) to inquire into how anything works.
I have a theory about why Erica Kirk was selected for the segment. Beyond being newsworthy and social media relevant in this moment, by interviewing Kirk, Bari wants to signal to Red Americans that they can give the revamped CBS News a chance. A chance to show it will cover them and the issues they care about in a fair and unbiased way. Maybe this interview was mostly a step in a process to gain attention and to expand CBS News’s audience to an include a demographic that doesn’t often watch it now.
Let’s be real, folks. If Ericka Kirk wasn’t a gorgeous blonde, no one would be paying attention to her.
+1 Phil.
D.A.
NYC (and I’ve overdone by limit. Night folks.) 🙂
Better to have interviewed Charlie Kirk while he was alive for FP.
It would have been unlikely that his widow would continue to grow this organization at the rate Charlie Kirk was progressing.
If “the Lord” will “take care of everything” then why do anything at all? Just sit back on the couch and let “the Lord” take care of things!
Easy: Sloth is a sin. Even though believers’ sins are forgiven (maybe requiring some mumbo jumbo), one is not allowed to exploit that loophole — “antinomianism” was declared a heresy by The Church, and heretics are beyond God’s forgiveness (and therefore also Fair Game on earth).
FWIW (and today it isn’t worth much), this was a particularly big problem in the Reformation Protestant churches, which officially rejected Rome’s authority but needed to somehow keep their folks in line, by any means necessary.
As a genre, Church History is very tedious to read, but that’s mostly a matter of style. The substance is IMO at least as dramatic as secular History. I expect Ken Burns, were he so inclined, could make a ripper of a documentary series.
If you sit on the couch, God is not taking care of things.
If you do your best and succeed you are taking care of things. Where does God enter this story?
I don’t understand. If you reword it and maybe add some more detail I’ll try again.
‘The other issue was Kirk’s incessant proselytizing . . . she said that it unleashed a big revival (I doubt it), that “the Lord is moving in ways we have no idea, and that God is going to use Charlie’s death to show the world something.”’
She needs to try that argument on her children when they reach (what the Southern Baptists told me as a youngster was) the “age of accountability” – knowing right from wrong. (I say this as one who at age four lost his father to his second heart attack at age 36.)
“Kirk reiterates constantly the fact that Charlie only wanted to have conversations, but that’s a bit of dissimulation, for Charlie Kirk was firm in his right-wing ideology and I doubt the conversations would ever have changed his mind.”
Kirk didn’t mind casually and dismissively “just sayin'” about “stoning,” being referenced in the Old Testament regarding certain offenses.
‘When asked how she was able to trust God in the “midst of unfair and immense suffering,” Erika cites the story of Job, who was made by God to suffer for no good reason, but in the end came out okay simply because Job prayed for his friends, which made the angry God change His mind.’
Never mind Job’s loss of his material possessions. Family members – including children! – play things that they apparently were, were killed as a result of this fatuous, casual wager between God and Satan. As Job did not not lose his faith and apparently redeemed himself in the eyes of God, he got his family restored. Were these the same family members? Or other humans? Why should they have ever been messed with in the first place? Sic semper “human resources” and “human capital.”