09/05/25: Same. Bonus! He annoys THE HELL out of the people at Bard College (his alma mater). His crime? Remaining basically the same while succeeding generations at Bard and the Ivy League Ilk turned into intolerant ideological banshees who remind me of (and I witnessed them) the b*stard Republicans of the 1960s.
I know, right?! We considered Bard for our daughter back in 2014. It was close to home, the campus is beautiful, and the curriculum and small-group discussions were appealing. It seemed like an Island of Misfit Toys, perfect for our girl. And the Steely Dan/Yoko Ono/Blythe Danner connections excited just the right amount of hipster irony. Leon Botstein is smart and impressive, and in our chat with him he expressed a desire to broaden the school's intellectual diversity.
Then they sent out an email announcing excitedly that they had invited Nancy Pelosi to speak at their next commencement. So I wrote an email back and pointed out, gently I thought, that if they really wanted to become more adventurous in the opinions they invited on campus, the doyenne of There's Only One Way to Think was not a promising start.
I guess they removed me from their email list forthwith because I never heard from them again. Ah, well. So I picked up the pieces of my shattered life and moved on. ;-)
Nancy is my Representative and proud to have never once cast a vote for her. To say she’s a liar is an insult to disingenuous. An awful speaker to boot.
Naw, she said she has never traded on insider information. She's just FAR more skilled than any other trader on Earth...I mean, somebody has to be the best, right?
On Martin Luther King Day in 2016 or 2017, the President of the ADL came to speak at the Synagogue on St. Thomas, USVI. My wife and I attended. He started telling us about how beautiful Nancy Pelosi is and how she was eager to tell him that one of her children married a Jew. I told my wife that if he kept this up I would walk out.
09/06/25: Being a (later generation) "Pelosi" will be nowhere near the burden of being a later-generation Clinton (knowing that the family-tree grandfathers and great grandfathers weren't Bill Clinton).
She spoke at a Temple in SF in 2023 said the same thing and noted her dad was a Zionist. She backed every anti-Israel Obama/Biden policy. Petty, partisan Pelosi, Nancy with the laughing smile all the way to the bank.
Someone that professes confidently that Tulsi is a Toady for Assad and at the same time highlighting her organization as an alternative to a corrupt media might as Matt says pick up the phone and talk to the accused before she repeats the accusation. I hope she learned something from that Rogan interview.
Where do people like you even come from? I'm asking United Nations are refusing to distribute food and we've seen it for months now. So maybe people are starving but it sure as hell not the fault of the West, like everything else is the fault of Hamas. Bari, not beri, did a hell of a job with Matt and trying to bring journalism back to an ethical foundation. I wish her well
"... the curriculum and small-group discussions were appealing... I never heard from them again."
"HERETIC! There is nothing to 'discuss!' Face the Pelosi Monument [a vintage stock-price ticker-tape machine in Botstein's private washroom], and bow in shame."
Can we rename the place after Nancy?
"Nancy College" has a nice ring to it.
And think of the ENDOWMENT she could create with all those fabulous stock tips/profits.
The men's basketball team could be The Nancy Boys.
P.S. Nancy went to Bard and got her ring kissed. "Oh," she thought, this is easy! I ought to do this more often." Then she went to Oxford (UK, a wholly-owned subsidiary of North Korea) and was practically run out of town on the rails...
All I know about Bard is that they have excellent festivals called Bard Summerscape. Used to visit every summer. Always had top notch picks from world culture. But of course, I have no doubt that as an educational institution it is woke like any other liberal art college. They all are, sadly. No exception.
10/08/25: We were up there last Saturday. Beautiful view of the Hudson River ----- and yet, Blithewood Mansion (at one time, a dormitory, since then farmed out to some rinky-dink-think tank) has been allowed to deteriorate. Zero outside/outdoor/exterior maintenance, which means the insides have been left to rot as well.***
My guest was even more disgusted than I was about it, and he had had no prior opinion about Bard (didn't even know that it exists), which is the real canary in the coal mine.
Meanwhile the disgraceful "new" architecture imported from Communist East Germany circa 1970s has ruined what used to be a sterling, refreshing and visually admirable campus. Thus, their decades of rancid ideological rants have infected all perspectives/ everything else.
The only available drink in the student cafeteria is probably lemonade.
10/08/25: Alas, that building is the worst of what has been built on the campus. My guest was so disgusted with Blithewood, we left right away and it only later occurred to me that it was a good thing that he hadn't seen the Gehry building. I think it was Richard Fisher who left Bard tons of money in his will, about 30 years ago. Daisy Soros also got involved. "God must hate money. Look who he gives it to."
09/06/25: SUPERB! I avoid cover bands. This one isn't a "cover" band. It has infused its own soul into previously written music. And they NAILED IT. What a shame I didn't hear about this earlier (it was posted 4 years ago). Thank you!
I know, I'd struggle to justify the statement "this isn't a cover band." After all, Leonid made note-perfect arrangements of the songs, just by listening to the records. Isn't that the platonic ideal of a cover band?
Somehow, though, they seem more like a classical musician playing the exact notes of a great composition. It's still his own music.
This. I’m much more of a cranky libertarian type than Taibbi, but he is a straight shooter on calling out bs from across the spectrum, and doing so in a darkly humorous fashion.
Bari Weiss is so honest that she lied about a journalist in Gaza joking about babies being burned alive and then the IDF bombed him and she didn't even take credit.
One of the joys of staying with a Windows 7 operating system is that Substack, at some point (when) and to what degree (how much), ceased to interact with W7 users. If I click on "Like," nothing happens.
There's no way to prove or disprove the validity of such a statement because the closest I can get to the truth are rumors.
However, given all of the other complications (100% negative) of refusing to "graduate" (get screwed by installing) Windows 11, my guess as to why my voting privileges had been neutered seems to be reasonably un-stupid.
For hundreds of Substack subscribers Substack "help" doesn't exist. Neither my "like" button or my "comments box" box function. Fortunately I'm still allowed to "reply". At the TFP platform only single articles respond. Access to multiple choices take me directly to "comment" no exception. Access to other Substack features exist in total disfunction.---Thanks for the software insight.
Checking the internet there are apparently hundreds of paying subscribers experiencing problems.
Using that browser is like bending over and pressing your asshole to the internet to get penetrated. In the end, if you don’t want windows 11, buy a Mac, or get Linux. Running old OSes on the internet is dumb.
Bari got Uri Berliner and his NPR story because she earned it exactly as Matt has outlined. Can she save CBS? If she brings her Musk size Twitter stones, just maybe.
Matt and Walter understand the actual "journalism" industry much better than I and they seem to have an investment/belief in the possibility of its salvation. Maybe so. But the ever more lethal reality that when I access electronic media my life is being accessed and manipulated by a host of players behind the screen, many of whom, do not have my best interest at heart, cannot be ignored. And, how much actual time can anyone spend staring into an electronic screen and not go a little nuts. I would think that choosing somewhere around four competent journalists should provide enough actual factual reports to keep the average reader abreast of current events. I abandoned the MSM long ago.
Despite the glitches (middle men should be removed) subscription journalism and the direct support of truth speakers may be the last fall back for this Republic. Truth is light. A solutions oriented truth/fact based national conversation might defeat the obvious political/financial psyop attempting to overthrow the American Republic.
They write lots of shit that is not readable but we have a choice not read the garbage. There are good pieces on FP now and then. Nelli is funny. I wanted to support her despite being much more conservative. It’s good to have many points of view to choose from.
Maybe those stupid-ass selfies from TGIF will start showing up on CBS News. "Here I am at a park/beach/my kitchen table, watching the CBS Evening News!"
I began with Common Sense and have continued support. I'm not so sure about TFP these days. I can't access articles or navigate the site and Substack is indifferent to that reality. ---- Likewise--(not just TFP)--there is a disconnect between "still livin' the lfe" bubble land pay me (Gladwell?) journalism and those living actual American reality. ---But then--I often fear that many people don't understand just how far South things can actually go.---I continue to believe that subscription journalism is a two way street and subscribers could play a must larger role in our national conversation than they currently do.--Just saying.
Phony Gaza starvation photos and genocide scholars, which set off a wave of stealth editing and buried corrections, just recently.
Yes, she cares about Israel, but the stories always link to the bigger picture of a lying, untrustworthy legacy media pushing a narrative.
I'm amused by some of the commenters, mostly in other threads, that decry the echo-chamber and then lambast TFP for not aligning exactly with their views.
They’ve tried to run a culture column which is a terrific idea. Sadly they staffed it with really really poor writers who get every single thing wrong every single time.
just one example shows what an utter failure they are: they tried to declare that streisand was a glass-breaking original (instead of the derivative, reactionary also-ran that she actually was. Ginger Rogers in her 50s did bigger box office on Broadway than Streisand did in her hey-day).
I signed up for TFP a couple years ago, mainly for the commenters banter and viewpoints (note I did not say "diversity of viewpoints") that challenged my thinking sometimes. I can say I rarely changed my thinking, but left the possibility open.
As TFP grew, the writers seemed to me to be from varied approaches to an issue, which is nice. I became disenchanted with addons like Eli Lake and his constant jabs at Trump even when not warranted IMO. He and some others simply cant say "good job" when that is evident.
I also am not a "same sex having kids " person, so I struggled with that as well, til I cancelled 6 months ago.
I still get the emails just cant read much beyond the first paragraph.
I am the same, although my subscriptions to them are, in part, also a recognition that my right leanings are partially a response to the homelessness of my yearning for honest reporting elsewhere. Congrats to Matt for his clear vision on so many things (including the masterful collaboration with Walter Kirn).
AOL was no longer innovative when they merged with Time Warner. They were a dial-up proprietary service on the open Internet, TW had no clue about the Internet and overpaid thinking that owning the acquirer of the Netscape browser would modernize them. Anyway, would you turn down a $200mm payday. She has investors who also have a say.
That's the part I don't get. Why is Bari joining CBS? Megyn Kelly put it so well: It's like agreeing to be the captain of this big ship that is going to sail off into the waters of the Atlantic. Sure there are a few icebergs out there but this ship is indestructible.
09/05/25: Some Lifebuoy bars of soap went floating by, but they refused to touch them in order to stay afloat (a metaphor for refusing to own up to their TDS and continuing engaging in childish tantrums). So. Here they are today, the prizes won in a Las Vegas / Wall Street casino carnival. OH THIS IS GOING TO BE RICH (Nepo-Boy trying to run a network).
As the polite smiling locals in Hiroshima say "Remember Pearl Harbor!"
Jews lived in Israel for 3000 years continuously. Lived in Jerusalem continuously since 1187. Bought the land to build the new city of Tel-Aviv from the Ottoman government in 1912.
You knew that, right?
Compassion is wasted on the moronic inhabitants of Gaza.
Let me translate "moronic" to what you really mean: subhuman. It blows my mind that any jewish person can rationalize what Israel has been carrying out these last few years. After all the terrible abuses done to them over the centuries they should be the last people on earth to resort to collective punishment and ethnic cleansing.
Off by a factor of 10: the population was 630,000 by 1948 even though the British had blocked all Jewish immigration to Palestine since the White Paper of 1939.
We know, somebody murders a Jew and the entire population gets targeted with starvation. Jews feel way too comfortable bragging about their crimes against humanity.
The Palestinian polling group Arab World and Development in Ramallah released a poll showing 77% of Palestinians approve of the Oct 7 atrocities, and 95% say Oct 7 made them feel proud.
"the entire population", just as the civilians in Nazi Germany killed during the Allied Strategic Air Bombing campaign.
No, it was the war Palestine started, including by killing some of Israel's babies, that means some of Palestine's babies will die, albeit not with any specific intent on the part of the infinitely morally superior Israelis.
The poll simply demonstrates what any person with a marginally functioning brain already knows to be true: Palestine and Hamas are one.
It should be shocking how infinitely stupid and immoral you are. Sadly, it is not.
So you really believe that Israel's operation in Gaza was due to an opinion poll? That IDF combat engineering teams enter Gaza tunnels because they're looking for babies to kill?
Sounds like more muddled Russian thinking, of the sort that produced Soviet Communism, Brezhnev and Nicholas II.
One doesn’t have to agree with her views on Israel to find the FP a reputable publication. This is what woke is - an insistence that one agree with every single view you hold.
And probably an opinion best left unsaid. Its amazing and instructive to me how easily a defense of Israel against the barbarians of Hamas slides almost seamlessly into a blanket condemnation of that individual an a general (and often vicious) discounting of anything and everything that individual has postulated. In such minds, the Jews are the problem, not the tens of millions of backward arabs (the epitome of backward-ass country fucks) surrounding them, drooling at the thought of mass murder in between beating their wives and fucking donkeys. Why is the Left so goddamn awful at picking winners? It’s like a mental disease.
Man, you really don't like Arab people, do you? Or does your hate include all Muslims? You're proclaiming yourself to be a bigot in order to criticize others?
Does that work very often? Just curious, because I've never seen it trotted out before.
Also, the epitome of backward ass country fucks is in the US of A, dude. Remember Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours?
Just one of my lighter moments. So many people so casually traffic in such base, egregious slurs of the Jews (of which i am not one) that every so often i just have to spread around some of the love.
And you got the reference! Its rare when I trot that one out that that someone gets it. The point I make in using that term is that our BACFs pale in comparison to the Middle-Eastern variety, who also constitute a much larger percentage of the population that our BACFs. And there lots of levantine locations where the BACFs are in power, saying one thing to gullible Westerners but quite the opposite when they’re home in their cesspools, beating their wives, fucking donkeys, and dreaming of the day when they’ll actually get to murder Jews.
So yeah. i’m a huge cultural chauvenist, which is neither. A) a bad thing; ir B) my fault, having been borne with functional eyes and a brain.
She one of dem evil jooz that control everything including the New york times, WaPo, and all them other medias that support that genocidal zionist entity against them valiant resistance fighting Hamas fellows.
Good on Bari. But if she sells to CBS, I’ll stop my paid subscription to TFP. If Matt did the same w/ CBS, I’d also pull my paid subscription here. CBS has gas-lit the nation over and over. No funding from this amigo for propaganda engines that are no friends of 1/2 of America, not to mention the truth.
I am of the same mind. CBS really needs bari and the free press, and I believe that she is selling herself, her Substack, her worth and readership short. She has to purge CBS of everyone of the reporters, bring in people like Matt, and a few others to train a whole new group of reporters of ALL ages, background, and tell us the truth, deal with reality. It also needs to expose the past duplicity of government and who gained. Including media reporters.
Why doesn’t she just keep TFP and add investors. Build it from the ground up. CBS is toxic, as are pretty much all MSM. I get the allure of the big paycheck. So, if she makes the deal it will be a gain for her, and loss for me.
From recent articles I’ve seen, it looks like the needed purge may be self-realizing. All sorts of staff threatening to walk if she is hired. Which if it happens, will be more entertaining than any show on network TV. Can’t wait for the obligatory protests (Hey, hey, ho, ho . . .) and the enraged response from the Tiffany Network’s enlightened viewership.
I dropped my sub to the FP too, but admire her business ingenuity, and her Honesty interviews on the whole have been quite good. FP got to be too fluffy and not enough reporting for my taste. I do miss the defiantly sarcastic Friday column by her wife.
It was somewhat humorous to listen to the takes by other "new media" sites. I listened to the Breaking Points duo and thought it showed a fair amount narcism to even think their opinions on the sale were as important to their audience as it was to them. Saagar reacted in disbelief of the 200M and mused about how their show was more worthy. You could almost see the dollar signs behind his glasses! Krystal seemed, predictably, to be more upset about the fact that Bari didn't hate Israel sufficiently and thus was undeserving. Feuds for ratings, a time honored ploy.
I started with Common Sense and was an annual paid subscriber until yesterday. Still pay Matt and Walter. Bari stumbling over toadie was a shock. The Israel and Eli Lake became unlikable. The TGIF showed me the readers who thought they were so cool, their new Instagram for selfies. Good for her, I’m out.
Sure, it's selling out. But for $200 million, even when reduced with other investors and taxes, there's not much other than killing someone in front of a cop I wouldn't do.
A breath of fresh honesty! I'd like to see a confirmed list of humans who would turn down that opportunity. And let's not forget, she might be successful in righting that smelly, sinking ship.
I don't know if she's the person (if such a person exists) to fix CBS, especially since she has no TV experience. But the list you describe would be very, very short. When one is not being offered big money (or in this case, huge money), it's easy to see the sellouts.
Bari is an Israel Lobby person as far as I can tell, so although I can’t begrudge her success, it’s not as if she’s really taken any risks, she’s got people who have her back and move her where she’s strategically best for the interests of the Lobby.
But still: big props to her. I fear she'll go the way of other women getting handed a sinking ship (looking at you, Marissa Mayer) and then going down with it
I’m a white male Veteran and have worked in banking for 25+ years, and the first Matt Taibbi article I read was the one he opened with something like “Goldman Sachs is a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” I’ve subscribed to Racket News for months because he digs up actual news. I often disagree with how he frames things, but I always read his work.
It’s always good when peers can set aside differences and bestow congratulations where it is due. Well said Matt. I don’t agree with everything Bari Weiss has done. I was a Tax Partner @ Big 4 for 20 years and saw the hard work that went into making deals like this possible. Bari Weiss has accomplished something very few do, and deserves the credit.
I think Bari has shown more grit, hard work, and business sense than the entire staff of The Nation AND The New Republic in their whole histories (and I know they're long histories). I have to take my hat off to her.
Pay no attention to these "if you ever said anything mean about Israel or anyone who is Jewish, you're a Jew-hating antisemite" dipshits. They're the reason I bailed on TFP. And I can confirm that I haven't missed them.
Israel is a country, Judaism is a religion. Religions don't have armies, economies, foreign policies, income taxes, nuclear weapons, etc. I assume you wouldn't accuse critics of Iran of being anti-Islam or the American revolutionaries of having been anti-Christian, or racist against white people, for not wanting to live under a monarchy, and you should drop this exception you make for Israel. Demanding that people hold an expansionist, genocidal, nuclear-armed state above criticism because most of its leaders are Jewish (remember, at least one member of the Knesset is Arab, a fact I'm guessing you love to hold up when it's convenient) is a requirement that colossal abuses of power be forgiven and even ignored. The very idea that any government anywhere should be above criticism for any reason at all is astonishing and plainly dangerous. Do you by any chance have any actual argument in defense of the regime, like--I don't know--those of the many Israelis demonstrating in the streets against their own government? (Are they anti-Semitic too?) I mean, if we're so wrong, you must have lots and lots of other arguments on behalf of Israel and its behavior, right?
Meg, baby, there isn’t one person who bleats “River to the Sea” that can describe Benjamin Netanyahu’s political positions. They wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a police lineup. Their criticism is not with Israel politics, but Israel’s existence.
Trust me, if I said Iran or Saudi Arabia has no legal or moral right to exist at all, a billion Muslims would take offense.
Go fuck yourself, you intellectually dishonest demagogue.
Your example about Iran and Saudi Arabia is irrelevant, and you're simply wrong about critics of the genocide, of whom a great many are Jewish, being ignorant, though I doubt you know a single one. And for the record, many of the people who bleat "From the river to the sea" are Israelis, like Netanyahu himself. As if it weren't already apparent, "Go fuck yourself" is the accusation of someone who's not standing on very solid ground. Do you have an actual rebuttal to the self-evident fact that holding any government (including Iran and Saudi Arabia) above criticism is dangerous, or the question of whether Israelis demonstrating in the streets right now are anti-Semitic? Are insults really all you have?
Israel is rara avis. Yes, multi-ethnic, religiously tolerant, etc. But it is specifically a Jewish State. So, yes, in this case the Hewish state has a multiethnic army. Your premise is faulty. Your argument is less an argument than accusatory rambling and snide speculation. You assume to know the thoughts of the one you respond to. Only you use IQ of 90 strawmen to represent those strawmen. You have no crystal ball. And the assumptions are as foolish as your initial and inaccurate premise. Pardon me for saying but your writing and analysis, such that any can be discerned, is amateurish.
Maybe you could copy and paste your full comment here and there for the occasional spot of critical thinking. It was inevitable that Weiss's defenders would bring their "anti-Semitism" schtick here in her defense, which basically sums up her career, at least since the start of the genocide two years from hell ago. Directly carrying water for the Israelis doesn't taint Weiss as a propagandist but objecting to the slaughter and ethnic cleansing they told us they were going to commit and continue psychotically bragging about makes one anti-Jewish in their addled brains. Since this smear was always a transparent dodge that's lost its punch, maybe these Bari lovers should start accusing those of us who believe in "Never again FOR ANYONE" of being anti-Christian fundamentalist, since they're the most numerous Zionists. Now THAT'S an accurate label I'd be proud to embrace, especially as the evangelicals are anti-Semitic garbage for being ready to sacrifice Jews for their anticipated rapture, the stupid, inbred fucks.
Meg, honey, if you really believe that the Gaza war is equivalent to the Holocaust then you’re either an idiot, a liar or a bigot. My thinking is all 3.
Here's the fucking deal. Hitler killed 6 million people after first sending them in boxcars to prison camps, gassing them in isolation, then burning them. There was no German Jewish "resistance" taking hostages and killing teenagers at a dance festival. Jews did not declare war on Germany.
Palestinians, on October 7, 2023 declared war on Israel. Israel responded in kind. For fuck's sake they are opening up new ice cream shops in Gaza this week. German Jews had gold fillings pulled out of their mouths to be sent to Swiss bank vaults.
If you really think these two situations are parallel, you are not only stupid, but insane and unreasonable.
It must feel good to be smarter and better informed than people like Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe, Mike Peled, Chris Hedges, Craig Mokhiber, Max Blumenthal, etc. Carry on with your insults and "facts." You're full of rage and that doesn't make for good conversation. Life's too short to engage with this level of hate.
A blood libel is a false defamatory statement that is actively intended to rouse murderous hostility against Jews.
Genocide is the act of deliberately exterminating an entire population or ethnicity, as Hitler did to the Jews of Eastern Europe. That is what it means. There is no one in Israeli government or politics that wants to do that to Palestinians, is intending to do that, or is trying to do that. (This cannot be said of the Hamas terrorists they are fighting). Nothing about this fighting has involved anything close to this. It's not a numbers game or a question of feelings, it is an essential definition.
So using the word "genocide" in this context is an infamous, defamatory act, that is intended to rouse, and has in fact roused, hatred and hostile acts against Jews worldwide, including many who are not involved in this Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is what makes it a blood libel. It is not "political expression" or "just my opinion" or "protesting" or "standing up to power."
You can easily find a way to harshly criticize Israeli war acts in Gaza that does not involve using this word. If you insist on using it nevertheless, you can't escape the moral responsibility for that, and for the support you lend to the beastly people who invented it and spread it. It defines who you are. Think about it carefully. Are you comfortable being a person like that?
Blood libels have generated many massacres over the centuries, and are a basic expression of Jew-hatred. That's the company you're keeping when you use that word. Just because all your friends say it and you all agree with each other, and nobody stops you and it's all over the press, does not mean it's okay. It is not okay.
I know what a blood libel is, though I've mostly heard about it in the context of the myth that Jews would kill Gentile babies for their blood. I was asking HOW you perceive this is to be a blood libel. You make the same mistake in your response that people make when they call criticism of Israel anti-Semitism, which is that Israel is in no way synonymous with Jews or Judaism, especially in light of how many Jews around the world don't identify in the least with that country and how many of them are actually hostile toward it. Israel is not a religion but a country with nuclear weapons, weapons, by the way, which it denies having and which denial it apparently feels justifies its not signing on to the Non Proliferation Treaty. Israel and its defenders like to use the fact that most of its leaders are Jewish as an eternal get-out-of-jail card, as if individual Jews, or groups of them--unlike the entirety of the rest of humanity--are utterly incapable of doing anything the least bit harmful (for the reason, one would surmise from your comment, that to criticize Jewish people automatically makes you someone who wants to kill them or at least see them killed. Commence head scratching.). None of this works this way. Not only are people who've been victimized capable of violence and evil behavior, like the rest of the human race and as we know from the cycle of child abuse, but it's incredibly dangerous to hold any government above criticism for any reason whatsoever, much less a country armed to the teeth and which has supported a great many of the United States's worst hand-picked murdering dictators over the decades. The irony is that Israelis and their defenders speak about Palestinians in a way that encourages extreme hatred and violence toward them, all while saying "Who, me (them)? I (they) wouldn't hurt a fly!!" This latter deflection simply does not accord with eyewitness testimony from Gaza, such as the heartbreaking accounts from dozens of doctors who've worked there, as well as raw footage of the carnage. I personally don't care what we call what's going on; I care that no more Palestinian children have arms or legs blown off or amputated without anasthesia. I care that no more of them be deliberately shot in one body part one day, another the next day, etc. (see doctors' testimony and actual bragging by IDF soldiers). I want Israeli soldiers to stop showing off their war crimes on TikTok because they've stopped committing them, and I want Palestinians to get their land back and for Israelis to tear down their Apartheid system, built with the help of Silicon Valley. I know, I know, you don't believe any of this is happening and that all these people are lying, including the prominent Israelis talking openly about their plans to kill and expel even more Palestinians, and I gather you believe that Israel is the most peaceable, diplomatic nation on earth, which makes conversation between us pointless. I just wanted, at minimum, to point out the danger of holding any country unaccountable for anything and everything it does. It's sheer lunacy and a recipe for endless tragedy.
"grit, hard work, and business sense" are all very well but they're morally neutral, except often the last of these. To quote Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. "
The point's pretty simple. Let's for the sake of argument that you think Ms Weiss is an Israeli apologist. Is her presumed work ethic praiseworthy? Or suppose you think, again for the sake of argument, that Glenn Greenwald is a self-hating Jew for his take on the genocide in Gaza. Surely then you'd not approve of the hard work he does, now would you?
I read this about Bari Weiss today, from the liberal dinosaur Michael Tomasky of The New Republic, who describes her audience as:
"...wealthy people...who, while not openly racist or sexist in most cases, nevertheless get the heebie-jeebies from all those Black and brown and trans people screaming about their rights.."
American liberals in their current incarnation are simply hopeless and would rather denounce everyone not locked inside their epistemic rubber room as bigots than take a single clear look in the mirror.
Above all else—honesty, sanity, reality, fair play, even the political principles and goals they claim to hold sacred—there is one illusion they will cling to like Odysseus to the mast: that THEY are noble, tolerant and enlightened and have complete proprietary ownership of morality, while anyone who dissents is a heretic—even liberal Jewish lesbians like Bari Weiss and her readers—and are implicitly evil and dangerous, and that the only possible reason anyone could have to disagree with our progressive clerisy is a subconscious desire to return to some retrograde version of pre-Civil Rights America. (This, not coincidentally, is exactly what Malcom Gladwell charged Matt Tee-ah-Bee with, when he was trapped defending undefensible dogma and had to figure out a way to rescue himself.)
American liberals have now become as deluded, dishonest, vicious and shameless as Lost Cause Southerners of a century ago. They are clinging to a dead world and dead ideas and can do nothing but lash out and throw public tantrums. They might have dwindling public trust and political power, failing business models and vanishing prestige, but they will go down to death defending their very own Lost Cause—that they are Good and wise everyone else is Evil and stupid. Bari Weiss is the least of their problems...
I wish I could like this 200 times. It’s the absolute perfect description of liberals! If you don’t mind, I’m going to copy and paste your definition, to my Facebook “what’s on your mind’ that’ll stir up a hornets nest for sure😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I’ve copied it to my archive of best ripostes from the internet as well. Several of your rants have made my archive. Your writing just nails things in a most incisive and sarcastic manner that is very appealing.
I’m similarly pissed off that old school liberals embraced their current sanctimonious lunacy and abandoned everything good about their platform. But, this is the way for those determined to ramrod their utopia into being. So much that was good and flourishing has been lost. Idiots, all.
"that THEY are noble, tolerant and enlightened and have complete proprietary ownership of morality,"
Very well said. I would add empathy - they view themselves as owning it, exclusively. The irony of openly hating Trump and anyone who does not share their hatred is lost on them. The increased importance of virtue signaling has played a huge role in the advancement of modern liberalism. Broadcasting your virtue now via Social Media is so easy, trendy, it's what all the cool kids are doing
What's a better way to virtue signal:
Send money to an organization that supports your cause
Or
Attend a protest and post photos of yourself at the protest all over your social media
. Bari understood what was going on in the legacy media and realized that there was a niche for Honesty and The Free Press. Starting a business and becoming successful is very difficult, especially after such a short period of time. Her success is an indication of the vacuum in the Media. Bravo.!
If I remember correctly, you, Matt, were the one who pointed out that, once upon a time, a fancy degree wasn’t even needed to be a journalist. The field was staffed by those who had a blend of tenacity, an early-bird-gets-the-worm mentality, and a knack for writing. This new elite journalist class are so insufferable.
In any event, I watched Megan Kelly and Glen Greenwald’s take on the Bari/CBS mashup last night, and both seem more than concerned that the dinosaur institution will chew her up and spit her out. And I suspect that’s exactly the kind of challenge upon which Bari thrives.
Meh. She'll be another sellout. Well, not a sellout exactly-- that would imply that she once had principles. She played her phony free speech martyr shtick well, and now gets to cash out. Mazel tov, Bari.
You think she would have been hired elsewhere after taking a stand at the NYT? She would have been blackballed if not for doing it herself. Nothing phony about it. You're the loser Taibbi is writing about.
Agree, the more degrees and accreditation one has, the less likely they can see truth. Used to be reporters just went out and reported. And good writers just wrote, and people watched and read and came up with their own conclusions.
That’s certainly my fear, and I’m trying to ramp my optimism up to 11 that she will instead chew up CBS and remold it in her image, or at least into the sort of responsible, fairly-near-the-middle-of-the-road institution it was when I was a young man.
I don’t have a clear idea of what position she is being offered, though, so that may be a pipe dream.
Television is a dying media. I can't see people flocking back to that format even if they started doing a good job, and that's a big if. In another 10 or 20 years when the boomer generation has passed on, the networks will fade into irrelevancy. Radio still has quite a few listeners in the trades and working class looking for entertainment while they do their jobs, but I can't see any lasting audience for TV. Which is why the fight for control over tiktok and social media is on.
Don't give up on radio. I am a boomer and not only cut the cord but cut streaming network TV. I listen to WHRO Classical and WNRN pop. A lot of young folks are getting interested in classical music. It won't die. On line, we have access to first rate west coast jazz stations. Network TV won't be missed at all-certainly not by me.
One of the modern progressive's most important duties is to make everyone else as miserable and unhappy as they are. I think that's one reason they despise Trump. He's incessantly positive.
I am a former TFP subscriber. Without diving into theories involving a certain country between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, I don’t understand the sale price. Elon Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter but there was snowball’s chance in hell it would be a good investment. The Free Press does not boast the engagement of subscribers, or YouTube viewers to justify a 9-figure sale.
Granted, not every article was bad, worthless, or outright propaganda. I recall there were some hard hitting articles about trans surgeries being illegally performed in a Texas hospital. But enough of the articles were garbage or outright lies that I unsubscribed. Apparently there are nearly 200k paid subscribers, which seems non-organic.
It doesn't matter that you understand the price. Something is worth what a willing buyer will pay. I don't think most homes are worth the asking price, but my opinion is irrelevant in the matter.
But egregiously overpriced? It’s one thing to buy a car at 10k over MSRP or 20% interest. Millionaires and billionaires tend to be very good with their investments… I just don’t see the business case here.
Now look, someone above linked an article which I haven’t read yet. I’ll check that out when I have time.
I don't think CBS is looking at this the way you are, Austin.
They have what is essentially a dead entity: a news organization whose trust level is so low they can no longer compete.
Reestablishing trust for $100 million or $200 million, on the CBS scale which involves billions in potential and lost revenue, is not a bad price, IF it works. Bari's financials are secondary to the bigger math.
Of course, there is quite a bit of "IF" here. If Barry is given free reign to re-charter and enforce editorial policy, they could stand to do quite well, in large part because NBC and other MSM are so hopelessly biased.
Also, although it's fair for you to critique Bari and unsubscribe, can you name any instance where the Free Press deliberately omitted a fact that a reader might consider key in any of their news stories? (Not to mention things like "editing up" Kamala's interview, or "editing down" anything Trump says, or deliberately changing actual remarks like NBC.
This is where the mainstream news outlets are hemorrhaging worst. And if Weiss can change this, everyone involved will be better off, most notably readers.
Their five-article hit piece on Darryl Cooper was misleading at best, malicious at worst. They labeled Cooper a Nazi apologist and mischaracterized his descriptions of Winston Churchill. I had already listened to enough of Coopers work on other topics to know he is nothing of the sort.
Ok, thanks. I don't think I read those so I will go find them.
Did they actually omit key facts? (Vs present what you believe is a distorted picture.)
I don't always agree with the Free Press's coverage angles, either, but in the case of mainstream media I'm talking about omitting key facts and sometimes entire stories.
An example would be MSNBC reporting for 3 days on the measles outbreak in Texas without informing readers it took place in a Mennonite community.
Maybe they just want to buy out the successful online Substackers? Maybe all of Substack is next because people are permitted to TALK freely? Is this the next attack on free speech? Podcasters after this?? Ellison is wanting a voice, like Elon has. Scary times.
Sherry, if you can afford to buy a Substack blog for $100 million dollars, you are not worried about your speech being suppressed. I know Elon bought twitter, but I’m convinced it was a business and publicity stunt more than red blooded patriotism.
That's what Matt Taibbi misses. It's not worth that price. So you have to ask yourself what really is going on? Tim Dillon had a great segment on it that went "viral" for a time.
As I noted in my own comment - the Free Press is the Atlantic Council's digital mouthpiece which means the FP today is what the New Republic was during the 90s. As Emily Jashinsky notes just the FP subscriber list is worth buying: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4DvgWVRJqn0
Kelly claims CBS insiders will eat Bari alive. I'm not so sure. Bari's remit may be to strip CBS down to the studs and move CBS mostly online. Bari's quite capable of firing everyone.
Update - thanks for likes - Bari succeeding will not be a good thing for any of us. See this and below.
"Eli Lake has a piece in The Free Press complaining that Donald Trump (via Elon Musk) is defunding the National Endowment for Democracy, a prominent CIA front group that has been one of the worst actors on press freedom over the past several years and deserves not one dime of taxpayer funds." Get it?
This is exactly why I unsubscribed from TFP recently. It’s not following its original mission of balanced news, at all. And some of its writers are no better than CBS staffers. I applaud Baris hard work, but I’m not sure it’s really as revolutionary as thinks it is.
With respect, you really think Bari is going to hire folks less interventionist, less pro Big Pharma, and less pro-war than the current dinosaurs? Really?
Folks need to snap out the "new media" things are going to be different delusion.
Things are going to be different as new media titans like Bari manage the rebrand of old-media giants - things will be much, much worse than today with a new generation of media-savvy, anti-free speach digital warriors, pumped up on neo-con nonsense, ready and eager to remove all free discourse from the web and feed AI goop and other crap into a generation of passive dunces who believe anything that appears on their phone.
Bari is great pals with Eli Lake - who will probably get his own show. Expect a bright, shiny stable of beautiful and handsome security state stenographers twisting and suppressing facts at CBS News, along with "mature" and "sensible" voices like Eli's.
When you read "Free Press" you're reading "Miinistry of Atlantic Council Truth."
CBS will be significantly worse and more effective under Bari than it is today coz too many folks believe that removing trans people from sports and women's bathrooms is the greatest challenge the world faces today. Bari's not a liberal - she's a bigot and a zealot.
Agreed, we can't overstate this point - she's a talented, incurious authoritarian with a few serious axes to grind - for real. I can't think of a single media figure more deeply-invested in making shit up.
If CBS has become nothing but an Intel State propaganda proxy, covertly, underneath the illegally placed boot of the CIA, I don't feel sorry for them. They need to lawyer up and start punching back. They won't because they believe they are getting something out of it.
The CIA feels entitled to the American public. They are also legally banned from influencing us, our elections and from peddling their foreign policy attack tactics on U.S. domestic audiences. They're not our friends. They're not your positive public agency. They're not the U.S. State Department. They are certainly not law enforcement.
Spook PR can go back to moving Houthi news slates around on whatever the President's foreign policy drive is. They can go pound sand. Complain to Tulsi Gabbard that this is precisely why we do not trust anything or anyone in the DNI tree.
During my 2-ish years as a paid subscriber, I cannot think of a single article that discussed business affairs at a professional or competent fidelity. The gal in the linked video purports that their subscriber base is chock full of powerful business and political figures. I just don’t see it.
You may be right about the quality of content (I'm somewhat in awe of how you lasted that long.) I expect, however, that many of Bari's most loyal readers come for two reasons: to have their biases and prejudices affirmed - and to get a feel of the approved zeitgeist. That would include all the tech bros currently flooding Washington, including the crew close to Trump.
Update I: Just visited the Free Press - monster site packed with great writers showcasing domestic/cultural issues. Nothing on Ukraine, out front, or Gaza, or the Censorship project. I'll take a second look.
Update III: Endless Wars at the Free Press, enter "Ukraine" in search (top left) scroll down to 2022 - the true horror show underpinning Bari's project.
I signed on around 2021. It used to be “Common Sense with Bari Weiss”. Got wind of it during her interview with Joe Rogan.
Back then it was pretty good, especially since the mainstream media used to still hold court over public discourse. Covid and the vaccines/lockdowns were in full swing, we were beginning to grasp at the full extent of the gender reassignment surgeries, not to mention DEI and the Afghanistan fallout. 2021 was a rough time and Common Sense actually provided a lighthouse for anyone who wasn’t a drooling cable news consumer.
Not long after the name change and the expansion did the tone and fidelity of the articles change. Bari sold out well before Oct 7…
I found plenty to read and listen to during that period, but that's me.
The fact that Bari was a/hired at the NYT and b/lasted as long as she did, was enough of a disqualifier.
Her face plant on Rogan when she called Tulsi an Assad toady, and then had to ask Joe what a "toady" meant was pure comedy gold. She's always been an entitled dunce who possesses a few gifts.
I wish her and her family well, but wouldn't want to spend 15 seconds in her company.
Anyone who is not familiar with that Rogan interview ought to watch it. Bari is nothing more than an empty vessel spouting received opinions. I wonder who the puppetmaster is? It sure does feel like there have been a lot of paid shills astroturfing her reputation since she left the Times. Her actions, opinions, and accomplishments all feel very manufactured.
I think you meant to say: the readers of the NYT/WSJ/Atlantic/WAPO/Nation/etc./etc. "come for two reasons: to have their biases and prejudices affirmed - and to get a feel of the approved zeitgeist."
TFP has a subscriber count under 200k, and having sampled their output for about two years, I can’t imagine they’ll break 1M. At least not organic subscribers. CBS is paying anywhere from $500-$1000 per subscribe at present value. I don’t deny they have other monetization avenues, user data and all that. But if I’m honest, this looks a lot like a bribe or a payment for services already rendered.
This isn’t how it works when you want someone to work for you. The focus is Bari, not the business. The price is the price.
When the Thunder want to sign Shai Alexander to a new contract they don’t project how many points he’s going to make, assign each a dollar value and multiply it by his field goal percentage. Then offer a deal, take it or leave it. They offer, haggle and offer again… whatever they are going to need to pay to make him suit up ONLY FOR THEM, relative to the market.
There’s no discounted cash flow analysis, no paying sub growth estimates. This was a highly subjective process - it always is when retaining the services of highly sought after executives and thought leaders.
The FP has close to 1.5 million subscribers at $50 a year. Let’s say CBS pays $200 million. That revenue is passed in 3 years. Not sure on the FP’s overhead but to me it looks like Bari is taking a cut to get back with the MSM and start getting cocktail party invites again.
You canceled on October 7th because Bari Weiss was upset about 1200 innocent people being murdered in all kinds of barbaric ways, and you just couldn't see why?
You're leaving out that about half the victims that day were killed by Israel, thanks to the Hannibal Directive, which was admitted to by the regime itself, as I recall. I wonder why that gets forgotten so often. There's also plenty of evidence that Israel knew full well what was about to happen. Why is there never any outrage about that since it's clear the Israelis straight up sacrificed their people? These are legitimate questions that should be answered with legitimate arguments, not dodges about "anti-Semitism."
Like your brain melts when somebody brings up facts that the IDF itself admitted to, like the fact that the IDF killed a massive but unspecified number of Israeli citizens in a killing spree against anything and everything along the border with Gaza that day.
Bari Weiss wasn't upset that the IDF themselves killed some gigantic portion of those 1200 people and never does any journalistic work to figure out how many people, as in, Israeli citizens, that Israel's IDF killed compared to Hamas and associated forces.
Must be because she has such a boner for the truth.
The millions of dollars are not for The Free Press. The dollars are to get Bari Weiss. What goes on with the Free Press is irrelevant. The whole purpose is to get Bari Weiss' brains, energy and vision to recreate CBS news.
I considered that point for a while, but $100M is about 2 digits too much for Bari Weiss. Look, you may be a fan of her and the free press but an org like CBS is several leagues beyond a Substack with a YouTube channel.
Thinking of 100 million dollar contracts, who comes to mind would be Tom Brady, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey… absolute titans of their fields, when they were at their peak. I don’t know Bari Weiss has ever had 1 million people look at her in a single show or event, much less regularly. Even split along a 5 year contract, that’s still $20M per year.
Personally, I am not as big a fan of The Free Press as I was in it's infancy.
He has FU money. If the $200 million gets Bari to walk away from The Free Press to clean up CBS, he gets what he wants. Making CBS relevant again is the long game. Relative to what CBS has cost him, buying her skill and loyalty is a pittance.
Those are two of the reasons I left. The Trump/Biden sarcasm in all of the wrong places in the TGIF was so ridiculous and unfunny that I found other better places to spend my money.
Yep that was the final straw for me…. I could take the BS that they were the first to report on Biden’s diminished state (only after the disastrous debate did they really take that on), the blatant TDS by her and Nellie and flat out refusal to give a voice to any Republican outside of the Liz Chaney types….. but the censorship of the comments (banning Kevin Durant time and time again for minor transgressions while letting that troll Comprof spout his nonsense) was a bridge too far. Now that being said she’s more reasonable and intelligent than the entire mainstream media and just about everyone else outside of Taibbi himself and a small handful of others. So good for her that she’s getting paid for betting on herself.
Yeah I never mistook them for MAGA by any means but their steadfast support for Cheney and Nikki Haley clued me in that they were Team Lockheed. Not the type to fight any wars themselves but boy do they love keeping wars going.
I know right? I must be getting huge paychecks from Qatar or Iran… must be the only reason anyone would oppose poor little Israel’s annexation of Gaza and the West Bank.
As I read more and understand it better, I realize CBS bought a cute side hustle in the FP, where they can shuffle the more Jewish friendly items, but really bought Bari Weiss. She is going to take a wrecking ball to the newsroom. I too am an initial follower, then initial subscriber to the FP. When I retired in 2019 I quickly learned I was being lied to. I found a quaint startup in the FP, a long time truth only podcast in No Agenda, a burgeoning news source in Daily Wire, and with the Twitter files, Racket News with Matt.
Normally I'd assume so, but She worked at the Times :). If you're willing to play chicken with the Old Grey Lady and win, the slobs at CBS probably don't scare you.
I would agree with you but there is a new man in charge of CBS. If he has her back when the inevitable jealous twits try to undermine her she will do fine. I've always believed in the magic of firing a few fucks.
The politicians masquerading as journalists at CBS, NYT, etc., don't deserve a morale boost.
If I were her -- and I ran two editorial operations for 15 years during my career -- i would fire the worst 5 or 6 reporters on or before Day 1, and tell the others their choice is to report neutrally or be replaced immediately by someone who will.
I agree on the “if,” but maybe for different reasons. CBS's inbred culture is so established, and their collective desire to undermine not only Bari but also the big guy may be insurmountable. Simply having her back may not be enough.
The quality of TFP is dropping fast because Bari and others with her writing chops don’t write.
TGIF is lame and snarky and often unreadable.
More and more paid pieces originally published elsewhere.
There is no question the coverage of Isreal will change considerably.
One hope Margaret Brennen is shown the door.
In reality TFP is closer to the Atlantic than it is s heterodox news organization.
Still read it ( skim a lot of it) but hopefully with the assets available at CBS Bari can up her game and make a real mark and make CBS a go to place for pretty straight interesting informative news. It will be left of center regardless and biased ( because thats human nature. A feature not a fault)
Reading Matt’s writing is like reading Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters. You get smarter at a compounding rate, and you get to laugh as well.
my first two paid Substack subscriptions were Racket and TFP. dropped NYT (after 25 yrs) and WSJ (after 40yrs). just tired of their shit. would rather read Matt & Bari & their supporting casts.
I am to the right of both Matt and Beri, but subscribe to both because their journalism delivers.
09/05/25: Same. Bonus! He annoys THE HELL out of the people at Bard College (his alma mater). His crime? Remaining basically the same while succeeding generations at Bard and the Ivy League Ilk turned into intolerant ideological banshees who remind me of (and I witnessed them) the b*stard Republicans of the 1960s.
I know, right?! We considered Bard for our daughter back in 2014. It was close to home, the campus is beautiful, and the curriculum and small-group discussions were appealing. It seemed like an Island of Misfit Toys, perfect for our girl. And the Steely Dan/Yoko Ono/Blythe Danner connections excited just the right amount of hipster irony. Leon Botstein is smart and impressive, and in our chat with him he expressed a desire to broaden the school's intellectual diversity.
Then they sent out an email announcing excitedly that they had invited Nancy Pelosi to speak at their next commencement. So I wrote an email back and pointed out, gently I thought, that if they really wanted to become more adventurous in the opinions they invited on campus, the doyenne of There's Only One Way to Think was not a promising start.
I guess they removed me from their email list forthwith because I never heard from them again. Ah, well. So I picked up the pieces of my shattered life and moved on. ;-)
Nancy is my Representative and proud to have never once cast a vote for her. To say she’s a liar is an insult to disingenuous. An awful speaker to boot.
But she's a hellofa investor....
Yeah, what a stock trader. It's like she has inside information or something.🤷
Naw, she said she has never traded on insider information. She's just FAR more skilled than any other trader on Earth...I mean, somebody has to be the best, right?
On Martin Luther King Day in 2016 or 2017, the President of the ADL came to speak at the Synagogue on St. Thomas, USVI. My wife and I attended. He started telling us about how beautiful Nancy Pelosi is and how she was eager to tell him that one of her children married a Jew. I told my wife that if he kept this up I would walk out.
Her child married up evidently. Being a Pelosi will one day be "a terrible burden to bear"
Pelosi is hideous.
09/06/25: Being a (later generation) "Pelosi" will be nowhere near the burden of being a later-generation Clinton (knowing that the family-tree grandfathers and great grandfathers weren't Bill Clinton).
She spoke at a Temple in SF in 2023 said the same thing and noted her dad was a Zionist. She backed every anti-Israel Obama/Biden policy. Petty, partisan Pelosi, Nancy with the laughing smile all the way to the bank.
09/06/25: I think Nancy is married to Prince Andrew:
https://airmail.news/issues/2025-9-6/the-time-i-met-prince-andrew
09/06/25: I think Nancy is married to Prince Andrew:
https://airmail.news/issues/2025-9-6/the-time-i-met-prince-andrew
You forget to mention, The Queen of Insider Trading...
HRC made that okay.
I'm willing to bet Beri's lies outweigh Pelosi.
Beri is the biggest hypocrite of Free Speech & even more so disgusting that she used Free Speech to elevate herself
This is the same idiot who didnt know what a toadie was but was so quick to call Tulsi one.
She is the same pyscho who continues to claim there is no mass starvation in Gaza
Someone that professes confidently that Tulsi is a Toady for Assad and at the same time highlighting her organization as an alternative to a corrupt media might as Matt says pick up the phone and talk to the accused before she repeats the accusation. I hope she learned something from that Rogan interview.
Not sure you’ve read much of Bari Weiss if you don’t know how to spell her name.
Where do people like you even come from? I'm asking United Nations are refusing to distribute food and we've seen it for months now. So maybe people are starving but it sure as hell not the fault of the West, like everything else is the fault of Hamas. Bari, not beri, did a hell of a job with Matt and trying to bring journalism back to an ethical foundation. I wish her well
Hm, maybe a sandwich?
I like that. "The doyenne of There's Only One Way to Think," put a smile on my tired face this morning. Perfect.
"... the curriculum and small-group discussions were appealing... I never heard from them again."
"HERETIC! There is nothing to 'discuss!' Face the Pelosi Monument [a vintage stock-price ticker-tape machine in Botstein's private washroom], and bow in shame."
Can we rename the place after Nancy?
"Nancy College" has a nice ring to it.
And think of the ENDOWMENT she could create with all those fabulous stock tips/profits.
The men's basketball team could be The Nancy Boys.
Excellent story. Thank you.
P.S. Nancy went to Bard and got her ring kissed. "Oh," she thought, this is easy! I ought to do this more often." Then she went to Oxford (UK, a wholly-owned subsidiary of North Korea) and was practically run out of town on the rails...
All I know about Bard is that they have excellent festivals called Bard Summerscape. Used to visit every summer. Always had top notch picks from world culture. But of course, I have no doubt that as an educational institution it is woke like any other liberal art college. They all are, sadly. No exception.
10/08/25: We were up there last Saturday. Beautiful view of the Hudson River ----- and yet, Blithewood Mansion (at one time, a dormitory, since then farmed out to some rinky-dink-think tank) has been allowed to deteriorate. Zero outside/outdoor/exterior maintenance, which means the insides have been left to rot as well.***
My guest was even more disgusted than I was about it, and he had had no prior opinion about Bard (didn't even know that it exists), which is the real canary in the coal mine.
Meanwhile the disgraceful "new" architecture imported from Communist East Germany circa 1970s has ruined what used to be a sterling, refreshing and visually admirable campus. Thus, their decades of rancid ideological rants have infected all perspectives/ everything else.
The only available drink in the student cafeteria is probably lemonade.
*** https://www.google.com/maps/place/Blithewood/@42.020833,-73.9183607,17z/data=!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x89dd0a41bdc6475f:0x4963d7c3827f7452!2sAnnandale-On-Hudson,+Red+Hook,+NY!3b1!8m2!3d42.0218278!4d-73.9084197!16zL20vMDhiM3M4!3m5!1s0x89dd0a13f9d5f02f:0xca35c1e3308b7ad9!8m2!3d42.0208328!4d-73.9165402!16s%2Fg%2F11xbb33yg!5m1!1e4?authuser=0&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwNC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
The Performance Center at Bard was designed by Frank Gehry
https://fishercenter.bard.edu/about/the-building/.
10/08/25: Alas, that building is the worst of what has been built on the campus. My guest was so disgusted with Blithewood, we left right away and it only later occurred to me that it was a good thing that he hadn't seen the Gehry building. I think it was Richard Fisher who left Bard tons of money in his will, about 30 years ago. Daisy Soros also got involved. "God must hate money. Look who he gives it to."
California tumbles into the sea.
That'll be the day I go back to Annandale.
no, I didn't go there. But neither did these guys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_8aZZ9d_EA&list=RDP_8aZZ9d_EA&start_radio=1
They are outstanding, never heard of them before. Thanks for posting.
Touring the US!
https://leonidandf.com/tour.html
09/06/25: SUPERB! I avoid cover bands. This one isn't a "cover" band. It has infused its own soul into previously written music. And they NAILED IT. What a shame I didn't hear about this earlier (it was posted 4 years ago). Thank you!
I know, I'd struggle to justify the statement "this isn't a cover band." After all, Leonid made note-perfect arrangements of the songs, just by listening to the records. Isn't that the platonic ideal of a cover band?
Somehow, though, they seem more like a classical musician playing the exact notes of a great composition. It's still his own music.
Hey, Bard gave us Steely Dan!
They also gave us Chevy Chase, who played drums with Fagen and Becker
I did not know that.
Same
Yup.
This. I’m much more of a cranky libertarian type than Taibbi, but he is a straight shooter on calling out bs from across the spectrum, and doing so in a darkly humorous fashion.
Same
BINGO!! and they are honest, factual and no bullshit.
Bari Weiss is so honest that she lied about a journalist in Gaza joking about babies being burned alive and then the IDF bombed him and she didn't even take credit.
A paragon of jewish supremacist truth.
09/06/25: In 2025, they're unrecognizable!
One of the joys of staying with a Windows 7 operating system is that Substack, at some point (when) and to what degree (how much), ceased to interact with W7 users. If I click on "Like," nothing happens.
There's no way to prove or disprove the validity of such a statement because the closest I can get to the truth are rumors.
However, given all of the other complications (100% negative) of refusing to "graduate" (get screwed by installing) Windows 11, my guess as to why my voting privileges had been neutered seems to be reasonably un-stupid.
Consider this a "Like"!
For hundreds of Substack subscribers Substack "help" doesn't exist. Neither my "like" button or my "comments box" box function. Fortunately I'm still allowed to "reply". At the TFP platform only single articles respond. Access to multiple choices take me directly to "comment" no exception. Access to other Substack features exist in total disfunction.---Thanks for the software insight.
Checking the internet there are apparently hundreds of paying subscribers experiencing problems.
I stopped reading at "is that Substack . . ."
I was about to block the tech support whining and I will next time I see it, but I can answer a question once according to my recovery rules.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermium
Using that browser is like bending over and pressing your asshole to the internet to get penetrated. In the end, if you don’t want windows 11, buy a Mac, or get Linux. Running old OSes on the internet is dumb.
Next time I am blocking.
Bari's crew only deliver 1 out every 10 tries, but that 1 will be a damn good piece.
Will all her family members be employed at CBS also?
YES - Exact same here!! I love those two
Yup
I’m not being facetious here—I really want to know. Other than the transgender clinic, what did FP break!
The Uri Berliner story was a big get.
Bari got Uri Berliner and his NPR story because she earned it exactly as Matt has outlined. Can she save CBS? If she brings her Musk size Twitter stones, just maybe.
I'm really not sure I want to see CBS survive. Death is an appropriate sentence for its many transgressions IMO.
I am conflicted. I would rather TFP get bigger and more successful, and CBS finally crash and burn with the rest of network news....
Matt and Walter understand the actual "journalism" industry much better than I and they seem to have an investment/belief in the possibility of its salvation. Maybe so. But the ever more lethal reality that when I access electronic media my life is being accessed and manipulated by a host of players behind the screen, many of whom, do not have my best interest at heart, cannot be ignored. And, how much actual time can anyone spend staring into an electronic screen and not go a little nuts. I would think that choosing somewhere around four competent journalists should provide enough actual factual reports to keep the average reader abreast of current events. I abandoned the MSM long ago.
Despite the glitches (middle men should be removed) subscription journalism and the direct support of truth speakers may be the last fall back for this Republic. Truth is light. A solutions oriented truth/fact based national conversation might defeat the obvious political/financial psyop attempting to overthrow the American Republic.
They write lots of shit that is not readable but we have a choice not read the garbage. There are good pieces on FP now and then. Nelli is funny. I wanted to support her despite being much more conservative. It’s good to have many points of view to choose from.
Maybe those stupid-ass selfies from TGIF will start showing up on CBS News. "Here I am at a park/beach/my kitchen table, watching the CBS Evening News!"
Nelly funny? nah
You're right, she's *awesome.*
Your honest support of FP where deserved is probably important to skeptical FP subscribers who worry FP will just evolve back to MSM.
I don't know how she changes it - Jeff Bezos has not been able to affect change at WAPO, and he owns it!
The new owner of the LA Times has not been able to change that either.
And look what happened to the guy that tried to change CNN....
my guess, Berliner shopped it around and TFP coughed up the "best $ deal" for him to come clean. 25 years and he finally "had enuf?"
huge!
In 2021 in her Common Sense Substack, Bari published parent Andrew Guttman’s letter to the NYC private school Brearly about woke brainwashing.
I began with Common Sense and have continued support. I'm not so sure about TFP these days. I can't access articles or navigate the site and Substack is indifferent to that reality. ---- Likewise--(not just TFP)--there is a disconnect between "still livin' the lfe" bubble land pay me (Gladwell?) journalism and those living actual American reality. ---But then--I often fear that many people don't understand just how far South things can actually go.---I continue to believe that subscription journalism is a two way street and subscribers could play a must larger role in our national conversation than they currently do.--Just saying.
Phony Gaza starvation photos and genocide scholars, which set off a wave of stealth editing and buried corrections, just recently.
Yes, she cares about Israel, but the stories always link to the bigger picture of a lying, untrustworthy legacy media pushing a narrative.
I'm amused by some of the commenters, mostly in other threads, that decry the echo-chamber and then lambast TFP for not aligning exactly with their views.
They’ve tried to run a culture column which is a terrific idea. Sadly they staffed it with really really poor writers who get every single thing wrong every single time.
just one example shows what an utter failure they are: they tried to declare that streisand was a glass-breaking original (instead of the derivative, reactionary also-ran that she actually was. Ginger Rogers in her 50s did bigger box office on Broadway than Streisand did in her hey-day).
I signed up for TFP a couple years ago, mainly for the commenters banter and viewpoints (note I did not say "diversity of viewpoints") that challenged my thinking sometimes. I can say I rarely changed my thinking, but left the possibility open.
As TFP grew, the writers seemed to me to be from varied approaches to an issue, which is nice. I became disenchanted with addons like Eli Lake and his constant jabs at Trump even when not warranted IMO. He and some others simply cant say "good job" when that is evident.
I also am not a "same sex having kids " person, so I struggled with that as well, til I cancelled 6 months ago.
I still get the emails just cant read much beyond the first paragraph.
$200 mill, seems awfully risky of a bet.
Who knows what the truth is "trust" has become a real American issue hasn't it.
And where is the follow up reporting on that story? Nothing on the DOJ and russiagate.
Same
Ditto.
Me, too
Right on brother
Same
I am the same, although my subscriptions to them are, in part, also a recognition that my right leanings are partially a response to the homelessness of my yearning for honest reporting elsewhere. Congrats to Matt for his clear vision on so many things (including the masterful collaboration with Walter Kirn).
I don't even sub to FP anymore, but hard to begrudge somebody for building something and then getting paid for it.
Because they are sinking, CBS is desperately trying to grab something that is still floating.
Am I the only one who is reminded of the Amazon-AOL partnership?
The declining partner went on declining, as I recall.
Mixed feelings
I gave up the free press when only the commentators were worth my time and many of the best of them disappeared
Banning commenters is a HUGE red flag.
09/09/25: Incongruous with "Free Press," no?
09/09/25: Excellent point.
It was new, innovative AOL and stodgy, old Time Warner - about year 2000. Declinig partner kept declining, but so did newer partner.
AOL was no longer innovative when they merged with Time Warner. They were a dial-up proprietary service on the open Internet, TW had no clue about the Internet and overpaid thinking that owning the acquirer of the Netscape browser would modernize them. Anyway, would you turn down a $200mm payday. She has investors who also have a say.
Good for Bari Weiss. Girl power!
I was commenting on AOL-Time Warner, as two tired partners. This trend does not carry over to Free Press and CBS/Paramount.
“AOL investment opens door to possible Amazon acquisition”, Computerworld July 25, 2001. You’re probably too young to remember.
no not the only one but you said it just right
These big orgs know they allowed a newsroom monster to develop and now they’re finding others to slay it.
That's the part I don't get. Why is Bari joining CBS? Megyn Kelly put it so well: It's like agreeing to be the captain of this big ship that is going to sail off into the waters of the Atlantic. Sure there are a few icebergs out there but this ship is indestructible.
$$$$
09/05/25: Some Lifebuoy bars of soap went floating by, but they refused to touch them in order to stay afloat (a metaphor for refusing to own up to their TDS and continuing engaging in childish tantrums). So. Here they are today, the prizes won in a Las Vegas / Wall Street casino carnival. OH THIS IS GOING TO BE RICH (Nepo-Boy trying to run a network).
Right, and Nepo babies named Murdoch have never done stuff like this well…
She lured everyone in with "Common Sense". She then showed who she really was once Oct 7 happened.
Nothing about that publication is "free".
“She then showed who she really was once Oct 7 happened”
Indeed, Bari Weiss showed everyone that Oct 7 was not in 1943.
Times change: you murder Jews and the IDF will tear your freaking head off. As it should be.
צחל חזק עם ישראל חי
And don't forget will wipe a place off the map. And steal their lands. Oh and occupy them forever.
As the polite smiling locals in Hiroshima say "Remember Pearl Harbor!"
Jews lived in Israel for 3000 years continuously. Lived in Jerusalem continuously since 1187. Bought the land to build the new city of Tel-Aviv from the Ottoman government in 1912.
You knew that, right?
Compassion is wasted on the moronic inhabitants of Gaza.
Let me translate "moronic" to what you really mean: subhuman. It blows my mind that any jewish person can rationalize what Israel has been carrying out these last few years. After all the terrible abuses done to them over the centuries they should be the last people on earth to resort to collective punishment and ethnic cleansing.
Here's a moronic inhabitant of Gaza, "poet" Refaat Alareer, joking about whether Jewish babies were put in the ovens with or without baking powder
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/7e22a
Moronic indeed! Thankfully, the IDF nailed him in an airstrike a few days after his post.
Blow your mind:
Never again means F A F O.
You'd think so...
The Jewish population of Palestine in the mid-1930s was 3%.
Off by a factor of 10: the population was 630,000 by 1948 even though the British had blocked all Jewish immigration to Palestine since the White Paper of 1939.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yishuv
I really liked the forever part. I wouldn't have expected to meet a Torah scholar in MT's comment section, but here we are.
Amos 9:15
https://biblehub.com/amos/9-15.htm
which is a good thing
Les, thank you. These people do not know history or the details. Lots of anecdotal blather.
We know, somebody murders a Jew and the entire population gets targeted with starvation. Jews feel way too comfortable bragging about their crimes against humanity.
The Palestinian polling group Arab World and Development in Ramallah released a poll showing 77% of Palestinians approve of the Oct 7 atrocities, and 95% say Oct 7 made them feel proud.
"the entire population", just as the civilians in Nazi Germany killed during the Allied Strategic Air Bombing campaign.
https://www.jns.org/three-in-four-palestinians-support-hamass-massacre/
Well if somebody released a poll, that must mean you can kill their babies then.
Jewish supremacist logic.
No, it was the war Palestine started, including by killing some of Israel's babies, that means some of Palestine's babies will die, albeit not with any specific intent on the part of the infinitely morally superior Israelis.
The poll simply demonstrates what any person with a marginally functioning brain already knows to be true: Palestine and Hamas are one.
It should be shocking how infinitely stupid and immoral you are. Sadly, it is not.
So you really believe that Israel's operation in Gaza was due to an opinion poll? That IDF combat engineering teams enter Gaza tunnels because they're looking for babies to kill?
Sounds like more muddled Russian thinking, of the sort that produced Soviet Communism, Brezhnev and Nicholas II.
The Third Rome? Seriously?
Enjoy:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/intel-officially-launches-most-significant-chip-lineup-sired-in-israel/
One doesn’t have to agree with her views on Israel to find the FP a reputable publication. This is what woke is - an insistence that one agree with every single view you hold.
Agreed.
She one of them evil jooz attempting to genocide them resistance fighters that like active wear to kill civilians. Them uniforms too constricting.
Someone who points out Hana’s are savages that should be destroyed?
Very well-said.
Agree. And then I cancelled my subscription.
Ps. My “Like” button doesn’t work either.
I don’t understand the “nuthin ‘bout FP is free” comment. Seems like a throwaway posturing as opinion.
It means the term "free press" is laughably used at what should be titled The AIPAC Press.
And probably an opinion best left unsaid. Its amazing and instructive to me how easily a defense of Israel against the barbarians of Hamas slides almost seamlessly into a blanket condemnation of that individual an a general (and often vicious) discounting of anything and everything that individual has postulated. In such minds, the Jews are the problem, not the tens of millions of backward arabs (the epitome of backward-ass country fucks) surrounding them, drooling at the thought of mass murder in between beating their wives and fucking donkeys. Why is the Left so goddamn awful at picking winners? It’s like a mental disease.
Man, you really don't like Arab people, do you? Or does your hate include all Muslims? You're proclaiming yourself to be a bigot in order to criticize others?
Does that work very often? Just curious, because I've never seen it trotted out before.
Also, the epitome of backward ass country fucks is in the US of A, dude. Remember Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours?
Just one of my lighter moments. So many people so casually traffic in such base, egregious slurs of the Jews (of which i am not one) that every so often i just have to spread around some of the love.
And you got the reference! Its rare when I trot that one out that that someone gets it. The point I make in using that term is that our BACFs pale in comparison to the Middle-Eastern variety, who also constitute a much larger percentage of the population that our BACFs. And there lots of levantine locations where the BACFs are in power, saying one thing to gullible Westerners but quite the opposite when they’re home in their cesspools, beating their wives, fucking donkeys, and dreaming of the day when they’ll actually get to murder Jews.
So yeah. i’m a huge cultural chauvenist, which is neither. A) a bad thing; ir B) my fault, having been borne with functional eyes and a brain.
The evil jooz control the world thru the magical powers of AIPAC! How much they payin' that Bari Weiss ? We all know who she really is!!!!!
Get back on your meds, boy.
Yes sir Mr dumb cough
Yep. She didn't agree with me post-Oct 7, ergo, I got snookered.
The FP was really good when it started and maybe for about a year, but (IMO) went in a predictable direction that got tiresome.
I’m with you. Let’s see how she does. I can’t remember the piece she wrote that put me off her, but she was provably wrong and not obscured news.
It was probably 98% of what she has written since 10/7/23 that put you off her. Maybe 99.
She one of dem evil jooz that control everything including the New york times, WaPo, and all them other medias that support that genocidal zionist entity against them valiant resistance fighting Hamas fellows.
Da jooz da jooz da jooz with their hook hoses and their beady little eyes
There are many wonderful Jews and shouldn’t be confused with murderous Zionist and Mossad.
Of course there are. There are wonderful people of all religions, despite the fact that organized religion is one of the world’s biggest issues.
Bari’s knee-jerk neocon sensibilities and absolute hypocrisy on Israel don’t make her a bad person.
I think there is more to the story than this hagiography. See my comment just posted
I don't think CBS News is exactly hurting when it comes to pro-Israeli reporters, but I suppose it's a possibility.
Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?
Yes, and it was a good one.
Good on Bari. But if she sells to CBS, I’ll stop my paid subscription to TFP. If Matt did the same w/ CBS, I’d also pull my paid subscription here. CBS has gas-lit the nation over and over. No funding from this amigo for propaganda engines that are no friends of 1/2 of America, not to mention the truth.
I am of the same mind. CBS really needs bari and the free press, and I believe that she is selling herself, her Substack, her worth and readership short. She has to purge CBS of everyone of the reporters, bring in people like Matt, and a few others to train a whole new group of reporters of ALL ages, background, and tell us the truth, deal with reality. It also needs to expose the past duplicity of government and who gained. Including media reporters.
Why doesn’t she just keep TFP and add investors. Build it from the ground up. CBS is toxic, as are pretty much all MSM. I get the allure of the big paycheck. So, if she makes the deal it will be a gain for her, and loss for me.
Let’s hope there’s a purge, I have serious doubts. It seems, I hope I’m wrong, she’s “back in the club” nothings going to change.
You might want to wait and see what she does.
Cancel now and maybe re-subscribe if she can total renovate the culture at CBS News. I tend to doubt that will happen.
Ya, appreciate what Bari has done but she won’t need my sub after getting in bed with the devil.
I agree and will also cancel the Free Press if owned by CBS.
From recent articles I’ve seen, it looks like the needed purge may be self-realizing. All sorts of staff threatening to walk if she is hired. Which if it happens, will be more entertaining than any show on network TV. Can’t wait for the obligatory protests (Hey, hey, ho, ho . . .) and the enraged response from the Tiffany Network’s enlightened viewership.
I dropped my sub to the FP too, but admire her business ingenuity, and her Honesty interviews on the whole have been quite good. FP got to be too fluffy and not enough reporting for my taste. I do miss the defiantly sarcastic Friday column by her wife.
It was somewhat humorous to listen to the takes by other "new media" sites. I listened to the Breaking Points duo and thought it showed a fair amount narcism to even think their opinions on the sale were as important to their audience as it was to them. Saagar reacted in disbelief of the 200M and mused about how their show was more worthy. You could almost see the dollar signs behind his glasses! Krystal seemed, predictably, to be more upset about the fact that Bari didn't hate Israel sufficiently and thus was undeserving. Feuds for ratings, a time honored ploy.
Love the post but I haven’t the heart to revisit Breaking Points. They started off great but rapidly plunged into the abyss after Oct 7.
I started with Common Sense and was an annual paid subscriber until yesterday. Still pay Matt and Walter. Bari stumbling over toadie was a shock. The Israel and Eli Lake became unlikable. The TGIF showed me the readers who thought they were so cool, their new Instagram for selfies. Good for her, I’m out.
She built it. Selling out is selling out, especially to losing CBS. Once a Leftie, always a leftie.
Sure, it's selling out. But for $200 million, even when reduced with other investors and taxes, there's not much other than killing someone in front of a cop I wouldn't do.
A breath of fresh honesty! I'd like to see a confirmed list of humans who would turn down that opportunity. And let's not forget, she might be successful in righting that smelly, sinking ship.
I don't know if she's the person (if such a person exists) to fix CBS, especially since she has no TV experience. But the list you describe would be very, very short. When one is not being offered big money (or in this case, huge money), it's easy to see the sellouts.
Agreed
Ditto.
it should be an inspiration to anyone who considers bari a foe: i'm going to build something better than she can.
instead, to paraphrase Freddie Deboer, they're complaining to the non-existent message board moderators
Bari is an Israel Lobby person as far as I can tell, so although I can’t begrudge her success, it’s not as if she’s really taken any risks, she’s got people who have her back and move her where she’s strategically best for the interests of the Lobby.
Ditto. I subbed for a while and stopped.
But still: big props to her. I fear she'll go the way of other women getting handed a sinking ship (looking at you, Marissa Mayer) and then going down with it
I’m a white male Veteran and have worked in banking for 25+ years, and the first Matt Taibbi article I read was the one he opened with something like “Goldman Sachs is a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” I’ve subscribed to Racket News for months because he digs up actual news. I often disagree with how he frames things, but I always read his work.
It’s always good when peers can set aside differences and bestow congratulations where it is due. Well said Matt. I don’t agree with everything Bari Weiss has done. I was a Tax Partner @ Big 4 for 20 years and saw the hard work that went into making deals like this possible. Bari Weiss has accomplished something very few do, and deserves the credit.
I think Bari has shown more grit, hard work, and business sense than the entire staff of The Nation AND The New Republic in their whole histories (and I know they're long histories). I have to take my hat off to her.
Edit: blocking anti-semites who reply to this.
I beg to differ. She has a LOT of backing as a Zionist media "Fellow." See my full comment
It's always those damn Jews!!!
Amirite, Adolph?
Jawohl! From river to sea, judenrein! Das ist gut! Vee Germans wanted to control za world but the jooz succeeded! So jealous!
your full comment is bullshit
"Zionist media" lol
Is that you, Himmler?
Your full comment is just more racist rambling. I admire your commitment to it. It's not like those other bigots who are on the bubble. You're all in!
🤨
Appreciate the declaration that you’re an antisemite.
When did this become Reddit?
Pay no attention to these "if you ever said anything mean about Israel or anyone who is Jewish, you're a Jew-hating antisemite" dipshits. They're the reason I bailed on TFP. And I can confirm that I haven't missed them.
Saying that Israel should be destroyed isn’t a “mean” thing. It’s an antisemitic thing.
Israel is a country, Judaism is a religion. Religions don't have armies, economies, foreign policies, income taxes, nuclear weapons, etc. I assume you wouldn't accuse critics of Iran of being anti-Islam or the American revolutionaries of having been anti-Christian, or racist against white people, for not wanting to live under a monarchy, and you should drop this exception you make for Israel. Demanding that people hold an expansionist, genocidal, nuclear-armed state above criticism because most of its leaders are Jewish (remember, at least one member of the Knesset is Arab, a fact I'm guessing you love to hold up when it's convenient) is a requirement that colossal abuses of power be forgiven and even ignored. The very idea that any government anywhere should be above criticism for any reason at all is astonishing and plainly dangerous. Do you by any chance have any actual argument in defense of the regime, like--I don't know--those of the many Israelis demonstrating in the streets against their own government? (Are they anti-Semitic too?) I mean, if we're so wrong, you must have lots and lots of other arguments on behalf of Israel and its behavior, right?
Meg, baby, there isn’t one person who bleats “River to the Sea” that can describe Benjamin Netanyahu’s political positions. They wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a police lineup. Their criticism is not with Israel politics, but Israel’s existence.
Trust me, if I said Iran or Saudi Arabia has no legal or moral right to exist at all, a billion Muslims would take offense.
Go fuck yourself, you intellectually dishonest demagogue.
Your example about Iran and Saudi Arabia is irrelevant, and you're simply wrong about critics of the genocide, of whom a great many are Jewish, being ignorant, though I doubt you know a single one. And for the record, many of the people who bleat "From the river to the sea" are Israelis, like Netanyahu himself. As if it weren't already apparent, "Go fuck yourself" is the accusation of someone who's not standing on very solid ground. Do you have an actual rebuttal to the self-evident fact that holding any government (including Iran and Saudi Arabia) above criticism is dangerous, or the question of whether Israelis demonstrating in the streets right now are anti-Semitic? Are insults really all you have?
🎯🎯🎯
the self-hating jews be everywhere apparently
Israel is rara avis. Yes, multi-ethnic, religiously tolerant, etc. But it is specifically a Jewish State. So, yes, in this case the Hewish state has a multiethnic army. Your premise is faulty. Your argument is less an argument than accusatory rambling and snide speculation. You assume to know the thoughts of the one you respond to. Only you use IQ of 90 strawmen to represent those strawmen. You have no crystal ball. And the assumptions are as foolish as your initial and inaccurate premise. Pardon me for saying but your writing and analysis, such that any can be discerned, is amateurish.
That's fine. What, specifically, do you think I get wrong?
We know you don't believe that. Everyone knows you don't believe that. You can stop pretending now.
But apparently the Free Palestine people think that Israel has no right to exist. Why is that, do you think?🤔
Maybe you could copy and paste your full comment here and there for the occasional spot of critical thinking. It was inevitable that Weiss's defenders would bring their "anti-Semitism" schtick here in her defense, which basically sums up her career, at least since the start of the genocide two years from hell ago. Directly carrying water for the Israelis doesn't taint Weiss as a propagandist but objecting to the slaughter and ethnic cleansing they told us they were going to commit and continue psychotically bragging about makes one anti-Jewish in their addled brains. Since this smear was always a transparent dodge that's lost its punch, maybe these Bari lovers should start accusing those of us who believe in "Never again FOR ANYONE" of being anti-Christian fundamentalist, since they're the most numerous Zionists. Now THAT'S an accurate label I'd be proud to embrace, especially as the evangelicals are anti-Semitic garbage for being ready to sacrifice Jews for their anticipated rapture, the stupid, inbred fucks.
Meg, honey, if you really believe that the Gaza war is equivalent to the Holocaust then you’re either an idiot, a liar or a bigot. My thinking is all 3.
You're long on insults but short on analysis.
Sweetie, if the analysis insults you, so be it.
Here's the fucking deal. Hitler killed 6 million people after first sending them in boxcars to prison camps, gassing them in isolation, then burning them. There was no German Jewish "resistance" taking hostages and killing teenagers at a dance festival. Jews did not declare war on Germany.
Palestinians, on October 7, 2023 declared war on Israel. Israel responded in kind. For fuck's sake they are opening up new ice cream shops in Gaza this week. German Jews had gold fillings pulled out of their mouths to be sent to Swiss bank vaults.
If you really think these two situations are parallel, you are not only stupid, but insane and unreasonable.
It must feel good to be smarter and better informed than people like Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe, Mike Peled, Chris Hedges, Craig Mokhiber, Max Blumenthal, etc. Carry on with your insults and "facts." You're full of rage and that doesn't make for good conversation. Life's too short to engage with this level of hate.
“Genocide” is a blood libel.
How so?
A blood libel is a false defamatory statement that is actively intended to rouse murderous hostility against Jews.
Genocide is the act of deliberately exterminating an entire population or ethnicity, as Hitler did to the Jews of Eastern Europe. That is what it means. There is no one in Israeli government or politics that wants to do that to Palestinians, is intending to do that, or is trying to do that. (This cannot be said of the Hamas terrorists they are fighting). Nothing about this fighting has involved anything close to this. It's not a numbers game or a question of feelings, it is an essential definition.
So using the word "genocide" in this context is an infamous, defamatory act, that is intended to rouse, and has in fact roused, hatred and hostile acts against Jews worldwide, including many who are not involved in this Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is what makes it a blood libel. It is not "political expression" or "just my opinion" or "protesting" or "standing up to power."
You can easily find a way to harshly criticize Israeli war acts in Gaza that does not involve using this word. If you insist on using it nevertheless, you can't escape the moral responsibility for that, and for the support you lend to the beastly people who invented it and spread it. It defines who you are. Think about it carefully. Are you comfortable being a person like that?
Blood libels have generated many massacres over the centuries, and are a basic expression of Jew-hatred. That's the company you're keeping when you use that word. Just because all your friends say it and you all agree with each other, and nobody stops you and it's all over the press, does not mean it's okay. It is not okay.
I know what a blood libel is, though I've mostly heard about it in the context of the myth that Jews would kill Gentile babies for their blood. I was asking HOW you perceive this is to be a blood libel. You make the same mistake in your response that people make when they call criticism of Israel anti-Semitism, which is that Israel is in no way synonymous with Jews or Judaism, especially in light of how many Jews around the world don't identify in the least with that country and how many of them are actually hostile toward it. Israel is not a religion but a country with nuclear weapons, weapons, by the way, which it denies having and which denial it apparently feels justifies its not signing on to the Non Proliferation Treaty. Israel and its defenders like to use the fact that most of its leaders are Jewish as an eternal get-out-of-jail card, as if individual Jews, or groups of them--unlike the entirety of the rest of humanity--are utterly incapable of doing anything the least bit harmful (for the reason, one would surmise from your comment, that to criticize Jewish people automatically makes you someone who wants to kill them or at least see them killed. Commence head scratching.). None of this works this way. Not only are people who've been victimized capable of violence and evil behavior, like the rest of the human race and as we know from the cycle of child abuse, but it's incredibly dangerous to hold any government above criticism for any reason whatsoever, much less a country armed to the teeth and which has supported a great many of the United States's worst hand-picked murdering dictators over the decades. The irony is that Israelis and their defenders speak about Palestinians in a way that encourages extreme hatred and violence toward them, all while saying "Who, me (them)? I (they) wouldn't hurt a fly!!" This latter deflection simply does not accord with eyewitness testimony from Gaza, such as the heartbreaking accounts from dozens of doctors who've worked there, as well as raw footage of the carnage. I personally don't care what we call what's going on; I care that no more Palestinian children have arms or legs blown off or amputated without anasthesia. I care that no more of them be deliberately shot in one body part one day, another the next day, etc. (see doctors' testimony and actual bragging by IDF soldiers). I want Israeli soldiers to stop showing off their war crimes on TikTok because they've stopped committing them, and I want Palestinians to get their land back and for Israelis to tear down their Apartheid system, built with the help of Silicon Valley. I know, I know, you don't believe any of this is happening and that all these people are lying, including the prominent Israelis talking openly about their plans to kill and expel even more Palestinians, and I gather you believe that Israel is the most peaceable, diplomatic nation on earth, which makes conversation between us pointless. I just wanted, at minimum, to point out the danger of holding any country unaccountable for anything and everything it does. It's sheer lunacy and a recipe for endless tragedy.
1) it ain't happening
2) the Gazan People's Army that started the war actually has Genocide in it's charter.
Oh, dear. Another one who has “JoOos!” living in her head.
I've seen boatloads of Israel lovers who are absolutely obsessed with Muslims.
Her success was before October 7, how do you explain that ?
The sit exploded before October 7, how do you reconcile that with your comment?
"grit, hard work, and business sense" are all very well but they're morally neutral, except often the last of these. To quote Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. "
not sure what your point is.
The point's pretty simple. Let's for the sake of argument that you think Ms Weiss is an Israeli apologist. Is her presumed work ethic praiseworthy? Or suppose you think, again for the sake of argument, that Glenn Greenwald is a self-hating Jew for his take on the genocide in Gaza. Surely then you'd not approve of the hard work he does, now would you?
I think it may be the beginnings of a treatise on the evils of coin.
Good. I will block em too. Actually no I won’t. I’ll stand up to em. Right beside you.
Please block me.
You must really miss Biden, since you you appear to practice censorship yourself.
no one's being censored. They can say whatever they want; just not to me.
I agree even though I have several editorial disagreements with Bari.
She earned it with lots of grit.
And I believe those who underestimate Bari @ CBS do so at their peril.
She is very ambitious and very smart.
I know that anyone who doesn't understand the media business thoroughly has no chance of pulling this off. Look at Bezos.
But she clearly does. So there's hope.
I agree.
Matt, you are hysterical! Malcolm "admitted he wasn’t packing anything down there..." I actually snorted with laughter! You are a gem!
I thought I wouldn't get another chance to watch Taibbi take a shot at Gladwell ... and then he throws that in there right at the end ...LOL.
Tiabbi, to you.
I did, too!
I read this about Bari Weiss today, from the liberal dinosaur Michael Tomasky of The New Republic, who describes her audience as:
"...wealthy people...who, while not openly racist or sexist in most cases, nevertheless get the heebie-jeebies from all those Black and brown and trans people screaming about their rights.."
American liberals in their current incarnation are simply hopeless and would rather denounce everyone not locked inside their epistemic rubber room as bigots than take a single clear look in the mirror.
Above all else—honesty, sanity, reality, fair play, even the political principles and goals they claim to hold sacred—there is one illusion they will cling to like Odysseus to the mast: that THEY are noble, tolerant and enlightened and have complete proprietary ownership of morality, while anyone who dissents is a heretic—even liberal Jewish lesbians like Bari Weiss and her readers—and are implicitly evil and dangerous, and that the only possible reason anyone could have to disagree with our progressive clerisy is a subconscious desire to return to some retrograde version of pre-Civil Rights America. (This, not coincidentally, is exactly what Malcom Gladwell charged Matt Tee-ah-Bee with, when he was trapped defending undefensible dogma and had to figure out a way to rescue himself.)
American liberals have now become as deluded, dishonest, vicious and shameless as Lost Cause Southerners of a century ago. They are clinging to a dead world and dead ideas and can do nothing but lash out and throw public tantrums. They might have dwindling public trust and political power, failing business models and vanishing prestige, but they will go down to death defending their very own Lost Cause—that they are Good and wise everyone else is Evil and stupid. Bari Weiss is the least of their problems...
That's one of the best descriptions of liberals I have ever read!
lol thanks!
I wish I could like this 200 times. It’s the absolute perfect description of liberals! If you don’t mind, I’m going to copy and paste your definition, to my Facebook “what’s on your mind’ that’ll stir up a hornets nest for sure😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I’ve copied it to my archive of best ripostes from the internet as well. Several of your rants have made my archive. Your writing just nails things in a most incisive and sarcastic manner that is very appealing.
I’m similarly pissed off that old school liberals embraced their current sanctimonious lunacy and abandoned everything good about their platform. But, this is the way for those determined to ramrod their utopia into being. So much that was good and flourishing has been lost. Idiots, all.
Thanks!
Good luck, let me know how it goes...
Please come back and post some responses!
I get the heebie-jeebies whenever I see a Tomasky by-line.
he makes me feel nostalgic, we both peaked in the 90s!
LOL! You are still climbing CP, you just need to start your Substack. Who knows what could happen?
Thanks! Much appreciated!
I prefer to lurk in the shadows, is ugly out there on the internet!
Sigh. You are right. We do need to take care of ourselves rather than cast pearls before swine.
Great Comic, btw
I thought that Heebie-Jeebies was a kosher grocery store.
"that THEY are noble, tolerant and enlightened and have complete proprietary ownership of morality,"
Very well said. I would add empathy - they view themselves as owning it, exclusively. The irony of openly hating Trump and anyone who does not share their hatred is lost on them. The increased importance of virtue signaling has played a huge role in the advancement of modern liberalism. Broadcasting your virtue now via Social Media is so easy, trendy, it's what all the cool kids are doing
What's a better way to virtue signal:
Send money to an organization that supports your cause
Or
Attend a protest and post photos of yourself at the protest all over your social media
CP, you need your own Substack!
I was castigated in ‘08 by my lily white liberal friends when I said they have become the new rednecks.
I tell them they're the new Church Ladies of the Moral Majority—drives em mad.
May I use that? It is perfect.
feel free!
Thanks
Crap, I described the pseudo-lefties that same way to someone the other day!
lol it's very apt, isn't it?
Absolutely! It's the same empty, smug sanctimony and classism one would expect from one of Falwell's floozies a generation ago.
Remember the "Tolerance" bumper stickers? They have no awareness of the irony
Once again, Clever Pseudonym you’re summed things up nicely
Thanks!
You always have the best comments - well said
"Epistemic rubber room" - that phrase alone is a classic.
And the description of contemporary American liberals is spot on - even to the point where they will go down swinging.
Boom! Nailed it. And, “epistemic rubber room” made me laugh. Thank you! 😊
Thanks!
this is why I
subscribe to The Free Press and to Matt
. Bari understood what was going on in the legacy media and realized that there was a niche for Honesty and The Free Press. Starting a business and becoming successful is very difficult, especially after such a short period of time. Her success is an indication of the vacuum in the Media. Bravo.!
If I remember correctly, you, Matt, were the one who pointed out that, once upon a time, a fancy degree wasn’t even needed to be a journalist. The field was staffed by those who had a blend of tenacity, an early-bird-gets-the-worm mentality, and a knack for writing. This new elite journalist class are so insufferable.
In any event, I watched Megan Kelly and Glen Greenwald’s take on the Bari/CBS mashup last night, and both seem more than concerned that the dinosaur institution will chew her up and spit her out. And I suspect that’s exactly the kind of challenge upon which Bari thrives.
I wish her the best and hope for her success!
Meh. She'll be another sellout. Well, not a sellout exactly-- that would imply that she once had principles. She played her phony free speech martyr shtick well, and now gets to cash out. Mazel tov, Bari.
You think she would have been hired elsewhere after taking a stand at the NYT? She would have been blackballed if not for doing it herself. Nothing phony about it. You're the loser Taibbi is writing about.
Adam- Very well put.
Agree, the more degrees and accreditation one has, the less likely they can see truth. Used to be reporters just went out and reported. And good writers just wrote, and people watched and read and came up with their own conclusions.
That’s certainly my fear, and I’m trying to ramp my optimism up to 11 that she will instead chew up CBS and remold it in her image, or at least into the sort of responsible, fairly-near-the-middle-of-the-road institution it was when I was a young man.
I don’t have a clear idea of what position she is being offered, though, so that may be a pipe dream.
She’ll be heading up the news room and responsible for setting the tone and stride. A big shot!
Hope she’s ready to fire a lot of people.
I hope so too, but you must be well over 100 if CBS was a near middle-of-the-road news operation when you were a young man.
Television is a dying media. I can't see people flocking back to that format even if they started doing a good job, and that's a big if. In another 10 or 20 years when the boomer generation has passed on, the networks will fade into irrelevancy. Radio still has quite a few listeners in the trades and working class looking for entertainment while they do their jobs, but I can't see any lasting audience for TV. Which is why the fight for control over tiktok and social media is on.
Don't give up on radio. I am a boomer and not only cut the cord but cut streaming network TV. I listen to WHRO Classical and WNRN pop. A lot of young folks are getting interested in classical music. It won't die. On line, we have access to first rate west coast jazz stations. Network TV won't be missed at all-certainly not by me.
"How miserable do you have to be to begrudge that?"
Oh, you haven't seen the depths of misery they will indulge themselves in. The world is so unfair to them!
One of the modern progressive's most important duties is to make everyone else as miserable and unhappy as they are. I think that's one reason they despise Trump. He's incessantly positive.
Totally. 💯
And that damn Trump. He must be stopped at all costs !
I am a former TFP subscriber. Without diving into theories involving a certain country between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, I don’t understand the sale price. Elon Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter but there was snowball’s chance in hell it would be a good investment. The Free Press does not boast the engagement of subscribers, or YouTube viewers to justify a 9-figure sale.
Granted, not every article was bad, worthless, or outright propaganda. I recall there were some hard hitting articles about trans surgeries being illegally performed in a Texas hospital. But enough of the articles were garbage or outright lies that I unsubscribed. Apparently there are nearly 200k paid subscribers, which seems non-organic.
It doesn't matter that you understand the price. Something is worth what a willing buyer will pay. I don't think most homes are worth the asking price, but my opinion is irrelevant in the matter.
But egregiously overpriced? It’s one thing to buy a car at 10k over MSRP or 20% interest. Millionaires and billionaires tend to be very good with their investments… I just don’t see the business case here.
Now look, someone above linked an article which I haven’t read yet. I’ll check that out when I have time.
I don't think CBS is looking at this the way you are, Austin.
They have what is essentially a dead entity: a news organization whose trust level is so low they can no longer compete.
Reestablishing trust for $100 million or $200 million, on the CBS scale which involves billions in potential and lost revenue, is not a bad price, IF it works. Bari's financials are secondary to the bigger math.
Of course, there is quite a bit of "IF" here. If Barry is given free reign to re-charter and enforce editorial policy, they could stand to do quite well, in large part because NBC and other MSM are so hopelessly biased.
Also, although it's fair for you to critique Bari and unsubscribe, can you name any instance where the Free Press deliberately omitted a fact that a reader might consider key in any of their news stories? (Not to mention things like "editing up" Kamala's interview, or "editing down" anything Trump says, or deliberately changing actual remarks like NBC.
This is where the mainstream news outlets are hemorrhaging worst. And if Weiss can change this, everyone involved will be better off, most notably readers.
Their five-article hit piece on Darryl Cooper was misleading at best, malicious at worst. They labeled Cooper a Nazi apologist and mischaracterized his descriptions of Winston Churchill. I had already listened to enough of Coopers work on other topics to know he is nothing of the sort.
Ok, thanks. I don't think I read those so I will go find them.
Did they actually omit key facts? (Vs present what you believe is a distorted picture.)
I don't always agree with the Free Press's coverage angles, either, but in the case of mainstream media I'm talking about omitting key facts and sometimes entire stories.
An example would be MSNBC reporting for 3 days on the measles outbreak in Texas without informing readers it took place in a Mennonite community.
Maybe they just want to buy out the successful online Substackers? Maybe all of Substack is next because people are permitted to TALK freely? Is this the next attack on free speech? Podcasters after this?? Ellison is wanting a voice, like Elon has. Scary times.
Sherry, if you can afford to buy a Substack blog for $100 million dollars, you are not worried about your speech being suppressed. I know Elon bought twitter, but I’m convinced it was a business and publicity stunt more than red blooded patriotism.
Totally do not get your comment. Read it three times. Please enlighten me. Thx.
Maybe I misunderstood your comment.
It is the market price.
That's what Matt Taibbi misses. It's not worth that price. So you have to ask yourself what really is going on? Tim Dillon had a great segment on it that went "viral" for a time.
As I noted in my own comment - the Free Press is the Atlantic Council's digital mouthpiece which means the FP today is what the New Republic was during the 90s. As Emily Jashinsky notes just the FP subscriber list is worth buying: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4DvgWVRJqn0
Glenn Greenwald and Megyn Kelly question the move while applauding the payout. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8v9oAlgggA
Kelly claims CBS insiders will eat Bari alive. I'm not so sure. Bari's remit may be to strip CBS down to the studs and move CBS mostly online. Bari's quite capable of firing everyone.
Update - thanks for likes - Bari succeeding will not be a good thing for any of us. See this and below.
"Eli Lake has a piece in The Free Press complaining that Donald Trump (via Elon Musk) is defunding the National Endowment for Democracy, a prominent CIA front group that has been one of the worst actors on press freedom over the past several years and deserves not one dime of taxpayer funds." Get it?
This is exactly why I unsubscribed from TFP recently. It’s not following its original mission of balanced news, at all. And some of its writers are no better than CBS staffers. I applaud Baris hard work, but I’m not sure it’s really as revolutionary as thinks it is.
Love the firing. I wish I could be there to hand them their boxes.
With respect, you really think Bari is going to hire folks less interventionist, less pro Big Pharma, and less pro-war than the current dinosaurs? Really?
Folks need to snap out the "new media" things are going to be different delusion.
Things are going to be different as new media titans like Bari manage the rebrand of old-media giants - things will be much, much worse than today with a new generation of media-savvy, anti-free speach digital warriors, pumped up on neo-con nonsense, ready and eager to remove all free discourse from the web and feed AI goop and other crap into a generation of passive dunces who believe anything that appears on their phone.
Bari is great pals with Eli Lake - who will probably get his own show. Expect a bright, shiny stable of beautiful and handsome security state stenographers twisting and suppressing facts at CBS News, along with "mature" and "sensible" voices like Eli's.
When you read "Free Press" you're reading "Miinistry of Atlantic Council Truth."
CBS will be significantly worse and more effective under Bari than it is today coz too many folks believe that removing trans people from sports and women's bathrooms is the greatest challenge the world faces today. Bari's not a liberal - she's a bigot and a zealot.
Douglas Murray is sure to get his own show. They should call it “Have you ever beeeeennn?”
I think that's "You've nevah beannn??"
Are you seriously arguing that Joe Rogan and Dave Smith are legitimate journalists?
Capital Z zealot.
Agreed, we can't overstate this point - she's a talented, incurious authoritarian with a few serious axes to grind - for real. I can't think of a single media figure more deeply-invested in making shit up.
Wow. In a really good way.
If CBS has become nothing but an Intel State propaganda proxy, covertly, underneath the illegally placed boot of the CIA, I don't feel sorry for them. They need to lawyer up and start punching back. They won't because they believe they are getting something out of it.
The CIA feels entitled to the American public. They are also legally banned from influencing us, our elections and from peddling their foreign policy attack tactics on U.S. domestic audiences. They're not our friends. They're not your positive public agency. They're not the U.S. State Department. They are certainly not law enforcement.
Spook PR can go back to moving Houthi news slates around on whatever the President's foreign policy drive is. They can go pound sand. Complain to Tulsi Gabbard that this is precisely why we do not trust anything or anyone in the DNI tree.
The “CBS deep state” seems like a challenge Bari will have to face.
If Bari needs help she can get it. If she wants to kick Mossad and embedded CIA out of the newsroom, I might start paying attention to CBS again.
During my 2-ish years as a paid subscriber, I cannot think of a single article that discussed business affairs at a professional or competent fidelity. The gal in the linked video purports that their subscriber base is chock full of powerful business and political figures. I just don’t see it.
You may be right about the quality of content (I'm somewhat in awe of how you lasted that long.) I expect, however, that many of Bari's most loyal readers come for two reasons: to have their biases and prejudices affirmed - and to get a feel of the approved zeitgeist. That would include all the tech bros currently flooding Washington, including the crew close to Trump.
Update I: Just visited the Free Press - monster site packed with great writers showcasing domestic/cultural issues. Nothing on Ukraine, out front, or Gaza, or the Censorship project. I'll take a second look.
Update II: Here's the year-old fig leaf: on censorship https://www.thefp.com/p/the-front-page-the-global-war-against?utm_source=publication-search From September 3, 2024. Since then, crickets.
Update III: Endless Wars at the Free Press, enter "Ukraine" in search (top left) scroll down to 2022 - the true horror show underpinning Bari's project.
So, that's the template for CBS.
I signed on around 2021. It used to be “Common Sense with Bari Weiss”. Got wind of it during her interview with Joe Rogan.
Back then it was pretty good, especially since the mainstream media used to still hold court over public discourse. Covid and the vaccines/lockdowns were in full swing, we were beginning to grasp at the full extent of the gender reassignment surgeries, not to mention DEI and the Afghanistan fallout. 2021 was a rough time and Common Sense actually provided a lighthouse for anyone who wasn’t a drooling cable news consumer.
Not long after the name change and the expansion did the tone and fidelity of the articles change. Bari sold out well before Oct 7…
I found plenty to read and listen to during that period, but that's me.
The fact that Bari was a/hired at the NYT and b/lasted as long as she did, was enough of a disqualifier.
Her face plant on Rogan when she called Tulsi an Assad toady, and then had to ask Joe what a "toady" meant was pure comedy gold. She's always been an entitled dunce who possesses a few gifts.
I wish her and her family well, but wouldn't want to spend 15 seconds in her company.
Asking Rogan what 'toady' meant was embarrassing.
Agree, but I’d def like to have a drink with Nellie, at least once😂
Anyone who is not familiar with that Rogan interview ought to watch it. Bari is nothing more than an empty vessel spouting received opinions. I wonder who the puppetmaster is? It sure does feel like there have been a lot of paid shills astroturfing her reputation since she left the Times. Her actions, opinions, and accomplishments all feel very manufactured.
I think you meant to say: the readers of the NYT/WSJ/Atlantic/WAPO/Nation/etc./etc. "come for two reasons: to have their biases and prejudices affirmed - and to get a feel of the approved zeitgeist."
It’s like when Google pays $1B for a small company with $30M in revenue, closes it, and hires the founder to run a new vertical.
That was the cost of acquiring her talent and dedication over likely the next 5-7 years.
TFP has a subscriber count under 200k, and having sampled their output for about two years, I can’t imagine they’ll break 1M. At least not organic subscribers. CBS is paying anywhere from $500-$1000 per subscribe at present value. I don’t deny they have other monetization avenues, user data and all that. But if I’m honest, this looks a lot like a bribe or a payment for services already rendered.
This isn’t how it works when you want someone to work for you. The focus is Bari, not the business. The price is the price.
When the Thunder want to sign Shai Alexander to a new contract they don’t project how many points he’s going to make, assign each a dollar value and multiply it by his field goal percentage. Then offer a deal, take it or leave it. They offer, haggle and offer again… whatever they are going to need to pay to make him suit up ONLY FOR THEM, relative to the market.
There’s no discounted cash flow analysis, no paying sub growth estimates. This was a highly subjective process - it always is when retaining the services of highly sought after executives and thought leaders.
The FP has close to 1.5 million subscribers at $50 a year. Let’s say CBS pays $200 million. That revenue is passed in 3 years. Not sure on the FP’s overhead but to me it looks like Bari is taking a cut to get back with the MSM and start getting cocktail party invites again.
Other sources say it has 155k paid subscribers
What services were rendered ?
🎯
Exactly. They bought Bari.
It’s comical watching people here attempting to back into a business value and struggling to make it tick and tie
Throw your DCF out the window. Paying subs have no bearing whatsoever on this. The number they settled on was exactly that - the cost of Bari.
That is proving very difficult for some folks here to understand
I subscribed until October 7th.
Oh good. I'll rest easier knowing this. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
It just happened to be the day his anti-semitism bonus got cancelled.
You canceled on October 7th because Bari Weiss was upset about 1200 innocent people being murdered in all kinds of barbaric ways, and you just couldn't see why?
You're leaving out that about half the victims that day were killed by Israel, thanks to the Hannibal Directive, which was admitted to by the regime itself, as I recall. I wonder why that gets forgotten so often. There's also plenty of evidence that Israel knew full well what was about to happen. Why is there never any outrage about that since it's clear the Israelis straight up sacrificed their people? These are legitimate questions that should be answered with legitimate arguments, not dodges about "anti-Semitism."
FYI , steel melts
Like your brain melts when somebody brings up facts that the IDF itself admitted to, like the fact that the IDF killed a massive but unspecified number of Israeli citizens in a killing spree against anything and everything along the border with Gaza that day.
they always seem to get distracted by something whenever anyone brings this up, it's uncanny
Bari Weiss wasn't upset that the IDF themselves killed some gigantic portion of those 1200 people and never does any journalistic work to figure out how many people, as in, Israeli citizens, that Israel's IDF killed compared to Hamas and associated forces.
Must be because she has such a boner for the truth.
October 7 never happened, just like the holocaust or 9/11. Some people did something.
The millions of dollars are not for The Free Press. The dollars are to get Bari Weiss. What goes on with the Free Press is irrelevant. The whole purpose is to get Bari Weiss' brains, energy and vision to recreate CBS news.
I considered that point for a while, but $100M is about 2 digits too much for Bari Weiss. Look, you may be a fan of her and the free press but an org like CBS is several leagues beyond a Substack with a YouTube channel.
Thinking of 100 million dollar contracts, who comes to mind would be Tom Brady, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey… absolute titans of their fields, when they were at their peak. I don’t know Bari Weiss has ever had 1 million people look at her in a single show or event, much less regularly. Even split along a 5 year contract, that’s still $20M per year.
Personally, I am not as big a fan of The Free Press as I was in it's infancy.
He has FU money. If the $200 million gets Bari to walk away from The Free Press to clean up CBS, he gets what he wants. Making CBS relevant again is the long game. Relative to what CBS has cost him, buying her skill and loyalty is a pittance.
But the comments! I've found a lot of other Substacks worth following because of the quality of the comments.
Yeah the comments were pretty good, it’s a shame that they started censoring some.
Agree 100%. Or they turn off commenting for an article.
Those are two of the reasons I left. The Trump/Biden sarcasm in all of the wrong places in the TGIF was so ridiculous and unfunny that I found other better places to spend my money.
That's why I left too.
Yep that was the final straw for me…. I could take the BS that they were the first to report on Biden’s diminished state (only after the disastrous debate did they really take that on), the blatant TDS by her and Nellie and flat out refusal to give a voice to any Republican outside of the Liz Chaney types….. but the censorship of the comments (banning Kevin Durant time and time again for minor transgressions while letting that troll Comprof spout his nonsense) was a bridge too far. Now that being said she’s more reasonable and intelligent than the entire mainstream media and just about everyone else outside of Taibbi himself and a small handful of others. So good for her that she’s getting paid for betting on herself.
Yeah I never mistook them for MAGA by any means but their steadfast support for Cheney and Nikki Haley clued me in that they were Team Lockheed. Not the type to fight any wars themselves but boy do they love keeping wars going.
Forgot to add, Kevin Durant is hilarious.
that's why I left!
The comments used to be more informative and entertaining than the articles.
There is too much fluff, and the articles pushing the virtues of being religious are annoying.
Being a nurse who has worked abroad and seen starvation, I found the TFP article dismissing starvation in Gazan children to be contrived.
Not a fan of the famine denial genre? What's wrong with you?!
I know right? I must be getting huge paychecks from Qatar or Iran… must be the only reason anyone would oppose poor little Israel’s annexation of Gaza and the West Bank.
James Li: Did Israel Just Buy CBS News?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK21IPuqtUo
As I read more and understand it better, I realize CBS bought a cute side hustle in the FP, where they can shuffle the more Jewish friendly items, but really bought Bari Weiss. She is going to take a wrecking ball to the newsroom. I too am an initial follower, then initial subscriber to the FP. When I retired in 2019 I quickly learned I was being lied to. I found a quaint startup in the FP, a long time truth only podcast in No Agenda, a burgeoning news source in Daily Wire, and with the Twitter files, Racket News with Matt.
I’m afraid CBS will corrupt Bari, honestly.
Normally I'd assume so, but She worked at the Times :). If you're willing to play chicken with the Old Grey Lady and win, the slobs at CBS probably don't scare you.
Good point.
I would agree with you but there is a new man in charge of CBS. If he has her back when the inevitable jealous twits try to undermine her she will do fine. I've always believed in the magic of firing a few fucks.
"firing a few fucks."
Magic indeed.... The ole morale booster. 😁
The politicians masquerading as journalists at CBS, NYT, etc., don't deserve a morale boost.
If I were her -- and I ran two editorial operations for 15 years during my career -- i would fire the worst 5 or 6 reporters on or before Day 1, and tell the others their choice is to report neutrally or be replaced immediately by someone who will.
"If" carries a lot of weight there.
I agree on the “if,” but maybe for different reasons. CBS's inbred culture is so established, and their collective desire to undermine not only Bari but also the big guy may be insurmountable. Simply having her back may not be enough.
Taking her position at CBS, is a no brainer. $200 mil is F you money. She’ll join them( which I think, was her goal all along) or quit.
That's also Megyn Kelley's take
Only one way to find out.
Too late
Same here.
Can't corrupt what's already corrupt.
Good article Matt. Very fair. By the way, did Chomsky have some decent recipes?
Chomsky's recipes are extremely monotonous because he always drowns the dish with red sauce.
Very funny!
Unfortunately, he never had one for the crow he should have been eating.
I hear he has some Cambodian specialties.
You never saw “Chompin’ with Chomsky”?!
That man could cook the meanest interior Mexican this side of the Pecos!
While I'm not a fan of Bari's neo-con tendencies, she is an excellent writer, and has built an impressive business. That can't be denied.
The quality of TFP is dropping fast because Bari and others with her writing chops don’t write.
TGIF is lame and snarky and often unreadable.
More and more paid pieces originally published elsewhere.
There is no question the coverage of Isreal will change considerably.
One hope Margaret Brennen is shown the door.
In reality TFP is closer to the Atlantic than it is s heterodox news organization.
Still read it ( skim a lot of it) but hopefully with the assets available at CBS Bari can up her game and make a real mark and make CBS a go to place for pretty straight interesting informative news. It will be left of center regardless and biased ( because thats human nature. A feature not a fault)
I wish her luck.
Reading Matt’s writing is like reading Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters. You get smarter at a compounding rate, and you get to laugh as well.
Very true
my first two paid Substack subscriptions were Racket and TFP. dropped NYT (after 25 yrs) and WSJ (after 40yrs). just tired of their shit. would rather read Matt & Bari & their supporting casts.
I dropped TFP and picked up Greenwald.
Greenwald is well worth subscribing to.
Yes and Shellenberger and Herridge too.
Me too