There are real scams and fabricated ones.
On Christmas Eve, I’d withdrawn cash from a Bank of America branch and then walked down to the Safeway for last-minute bows and ribbons, disposable razors, salsa, a can of Planters cashews, apples and Utz salt & vinegar potato chips. Checked out, I was walking back to my office on N. Charles St. and heard a lady yelling, “Sir, sir, I need to talk to you!” I turned around, figured it was somebody else she was hailing and resumed work on my computer. Then a knock on the door: the same woman, a ragamuffin with glitter-splattered shoes, said she was a representative from the bank and needed my name, address and debit card number. Just a routine check she insisted and asked to come inside. I didn’t shut the door in her face for such an obvious ploy to digitally rob me, but probably should’ve. Worse than a Jehovah’s Witness. Maybe a decade ago, I would’ve given this person more time, but it’s a thieving and cowardly new world, and though it’s a fruitless exercise I attempt to keep what’s left of my privacy intact.
As for mostly meaningless and self-aggrandizing (on both sides) scams, last week was awash, again, in Everything Bari Weiss. It’s always been true that the media loves (and self-delusionally, or straight-up ego-stroking) to write/talk about the media, but with the veracity of every news organization in question, it’s harder to avoid. After Weiss, in her new position of CBS News’ editor, held a 60 Minutes story about “migrant detainees” in El Salvador, social media (and pundits) acted as if Donald Trump had orchestrated a coup of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. (The Brits would thank America.) The liberal/progressive portion (which is most of the cherry pie) wailed on Weiss’ alleged censorship and ridiculed her credentials as a “journalist.” Weiss, who worked for The Wall Street Journal and New York Times before helping to found the inconsequential Free Press, is a journalist, just not a good one. Her strength is tireless self-promotion, sucking up to rich benefactors and making I-Am-Bari-Hear-Me-Roar statements.
I don’t watch CBS News, haven’t for years, and can’t recall the last time tuning into 60 Minutes. Probably during the Clinton Administration. It’s said that some Americans still do, although the Paramount-owned company likely has better success with NCIS, for viewers and advertisers, than its irrelevant news shows.
The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait, never shy about making a fool of himself, proclaimed on Dec. 22nd: “Although many of Trump’s goals to reindustrialize the economy or prosecute his enemies have foundered, his plan to corrupt the media is starting to work.” Aside from CBS and Weiss, Chait provides no other examples of Trump “corrupting” a media that in most Americans’ eyes is already corrupt. He doesn’t mention anti-Trump New York Times, Boston Globe, NPR, The Guardian or his own employer The Atlantic. That’s dishonest—especially since he writes about getting “all sides of the story,” but Chait’s a mini-mini-Weiss, writing biased stories (it’s within the realm of possibility that Chait doesn’t know he’s repeating talking points like a monkey) but still drawing paychecks. Just another example of a adjunct DNC shill “failing upwards.”
By the way, it in the cards that Margaret Sullivan will retire soon, and stop embarrassing herself in print? It’d be a smart New Year’s plan. “Pedigree” notwithstanding (New York Times, Washington Post and now, a step down, The Guardian) Sullivan’s in a barely-discovered time zone that’s more remote than Chait’s; so remote that she may have just Peter Baker, David Remnick and TDS-Elmer Gantry David Frum as cellmates. Writing about the stupid and inconsequential 60 Minutes fracas, under the headline “Bari Weiss yanking a 60 Minutes story is censorship by oligarchy,” Sullivan opens: “One tries to give people the benefit of the doubt [I have no recollection of such “benefits of the doubt” from Sullivan]. But now, when it comes to Bari Weiss as the editor in chief of CBS News, there is no longer any doubt. A broadcast-news neophyte, Weiss has no business in that exalted role.”
In 2025, that job is no longer “exalted,” but that doesn’t matter. Weiss made the deal with Paramount, so she does have “business” there. In any case, Weiss is an obnoxious personality, but she’s a political centrist, and despite the howls from peers at her every move, likely won’t change much at CBS, if anyone cares to notice.
The photo above, from an evening at the now-shuttered How’s Bayou bar in Tribeca, shows Alan Hirsch (not so long after he and I sold Baltimore’s City Paper, and he exited the newspaper business) and our college classmate/CP art director Joachim Blunck, dressed up for a FOX-TV gala. He was in the Murdoch orbit for years before moving to California (but also took the time, gratis, to design New York Press).
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Lady Gaga is born and Cary Grant dies; Milltown Cemetery attack in Belfast; Sandy Lyles wins The Masters; Hüsker Dü release their major label debut Candy Apple Grey; Margaret Thatcher gives “Bruges” speech; David Lodge’s Nice Work, Tom Clancy’s The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Richard Russo’s The Risk Pool and Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood are published; Peter Carey wins the Booker Prize; Alred Uhry wins the Drama Pulitzer; Nicholas Braun is born and Eva Novak dies; The California Raisins rule in television advertising; Ultravox disbands; Art Garfunkel’s Lefty is released; and Brian Boitano wins the Figure Skating Championship.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023